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

358 points ofalkaed | 6 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.366s | source | bottom

Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
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zaptheimpaler ◴[12 Oct 25 08:20 UTC] No.45556394[source]▶
Adobe Flash / Shockwave. After all these decades, I've yet to see a tool that makes it as easy to make games or multimedia as Flash did. One of many reminders recently (many others in politics) that humanity doesn't just inevitably or linearly move forward in any domain, or even 2 steps forward 1 step back. Some things are just lost to time - maybe rediscovered in a century, maybe never.
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eloisant ◴[12 Oct 25 13:50 UTC] No.45558222[source]▶
I wish Flash would have died sooner.

It was a plague on the web, you couldn't zoom, select text, go back, just a black box ignoring everything about your web browser.

Killing it was probably the best thing Jobs ever did.

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1. acheron ◴[12 Oct 25 15:14 UTC] No.45558778[source]▶
This. Flash was awful. I see people defending it and I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
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2. big_toast ◴[12 Oct 25 16:00 UTC] No.45559182[source]▶
I dunno, a whole subtree of the internet died and I’m not sure it really came back. It was a beautiful Galápagos Islands.
3. sarchertech ◴[12 Oct 25 16:35 UTC] No.45559519[source]▶
For the most part, people are talking about games and animation, not text based websites.
4. acidburnNSA ◴[12 Oct 25 16:53 UTC] No.45559678[source]▶
Did you ever try one of those Flash-based room escape games? It was really amazing to lose yourself in the challenges and puzzles.
5. 9x39 ◴[12 Oct 25 17:17 UTC] No.45559905[source]▶
It was both awful when it showed up in the enterprise and amazing at unleashing creativity for many. Most young non-technical people I knew during its rise had regularly made Flash creations or even games, and deeply enjoyed the Cambrian explosion of games and animations for a few years.
6. morshu9001 ◴[12 Oct 25 18:13 UTC] No.45560399[source]▶
It was really meant for animation and games but got misused as a web GUI tool. I think it would've been fine to allow it anyway, and anyone who wants to build a GUI can just not use Flash.