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Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

358 points ofalkaed | 15 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source | bottom

Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
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piskov ◴[12 Oct 25 03:59 UTC] No.45555096[source]▶
Microsoft Silverlight.

Full C# instead of god forbidden js.

Full vector dpi aware UI, with grid, complex animation, and all other stuff that html5/css didn’t have in 2018 but silverlight had even in 2010 (probable even earlier).

MVVM pattern, two-way bindings. Expression Blend (basically figma) that allowed designers create UI that was XAML, had sample data, and could be used be devs as is with maybe some cleanup.

Excellent tooling, static analysis, debugging, what have you.

Rendered and worked completely the same in any browser (safari, ie, chrome, opera, firefox) on mac and windows

If that thing still worked, boy would we be in a better place regarding web apps.

Unfortunately, iPhone killed adobe flash and Silverlight as an aftermath. Too slow processor, too much energy consumption.

replies(4): >>45555141 #>>45555576 #>>45555725 #>>45557264 #
1. drnick1 ◴[12 Oct 25 04:10 UTC] No.45555141[source]▶
I am happy this one died. It was just another attempt by Microsoft to sidestep open web standards in favor of a proprietary platform. The other notorious example is Flash, and both should be considered malware.
replies(4): >>45555236 #>>45555238 #>>45556687 #>>45558274 #
2. ugh123 ◴[12 Oct 25 04:30 UTC] No.45555236[source]▶
Did Silverlight have the same security issues as Flash?
replies(2): >>45556477 #>>45556486 #
3. Rohansi ◴[12 Oct 25 04:30 UTC] No.45555238[source]▶
Open web standards are great but consider where we could have been if competition drove them a different way? We're still stuck with JavaScript today (wasm still needs it). Layout/styling is caught up now but where would we be if that came sooner?
replies(1): >>45555658 #
4. motorest ◴[12 Oct 25 06:02 UTC] No.45555658[source]▶
> Open web standards are great but consider where we could have been if competition drove them a different way? We're still stuck with JavaScript today (wasm still needs it). Layout/styling is caught up now but where would we be if that came sooner?

Why do you think JavaScript is a problem? And a big enough problem to risk destroying open web standards.

replies(3): >>45556173 #>>45556633 #>>45560043 #
5. ◴[12 Oct 25 07:46 UTC] No.45556173{3}[source]▶
6. cube00 ◴[12 Oct 25 08:37 UTC] No.45556477[source]▶
Yes, even using C# couldn't save them.

> A remote code execution vulnerability exists when Microsoft Silverlight decodes strings using a malicious decoder that can return negative offsets that cause Silverlight to replace unsafe object headers with contents provided by an attacker. In a web-browsing scenario, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could obtain the same permissions as the currently logged-on user. If a user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker could take complete control of the affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securityb...

7. klabetron ◴[12 Oct 25 08:38 UTC] No.45556486[source]▶
Probably didn’t have the level of adoption needed for the nefarious types to justify spending time finding Silverlight exploits.
8. piskov ◴[12 Oct 25 09:01 UTC] No.45556633{3}[source]▶
The same reason Typescript exists
replies(1): >>45556885 #
9. piskov ◴[12 Oct 25 09:10 UTC] No.45556687[source]▶
What web standards? :-)

Stuff like angularjs was basically created for the same reason flash/silverlight went down — iphone

10. motorest ◴[12 Oct 25 09:54 UTC] No.45556885{4}[source]▶
> The same reason Typescript exists

TypeScript exists for the same reason things like mypy exists, and no one in their right mind claims that python's openness should be threatened just because static typing is convenient.

replies(1): >>45557740 #
11. nurbl ◴[12 Oct 25 12:28 UTC] No.45557740{5}[source]▶
Though in principle they serve similar purposes there are some big differences though. Python with types is still just python. Typescript is a different language from JS (guess it a superset?) and it being controlled by a large company could be considered problematic.

I suppose JS could go in the same direction and adopt the typing syntax from TS as a non-runtime thing. Then the typescript compiler would become something like mypy, an entirely optional part of the ecosystem.

replies(2): >>45562313 #>>45574089 #
12. adabyron ◴[12 Oct 25 14:00 UTC] No.45558274[source]▶
Flash & Silverlight were both ahead of the current open web standards at the time. They also didn't suffer as much from the browser wars.

Flash's ActionScript helped influence changes to modern JS that we all enjoy.

You sometimes need alternative ideas to promote & improve ideas for open web standards.

13. Rohansi ◴[12 Oct 25 17:31 UTC] No.45560043{3}[source]▶
It's not that it's a problem I just don't think it's the best place to be. It was not designed to be used like this. Yes, it's better now but it's still not great - you still ship JS as text blobs that need to be parsed and compiled by every browser.

I don't see how alternatives to JavaScript are a risk to open web standards. WebAssembly is itself a part of those same standards. It's just a shame that it was built as an extension of JavaScript instead of being an actual alternative.

14. motorest ◴[12 Oct 25 21:55 UTC] No.45562313{6}[source]▶
> Python with types is still just python. Typescript is a different language from JS (guess it a superset?)

No, it's the exact same thing. TypeScript adds support for type annotations, and removing these annotations leads to JavaScript. See how Node.js added support for TypeScript by implementing type stripping in v22.

https://nodejs.org/api/typescript.html#type-stripping

15. joquarky ◴[13 Oct 25 22:39 UTC] No.45574089{6}[source]▶
If your IDE supports JSDoc, then TS isn't needed for basic type constraints.

https://jsdoc.app/