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

358 points ofalkaed | 1 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.196s | source

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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1. al_borland ◴[12 Oct 25 20:37 UTC] No.45561684[source]▶
The big issue with Flash was how overused it was.

When Flash was on its way out one app made at the place I worked still said they needed it, and I couldn't figure out why... it was a Java app. After some digging, I found it, some horizontal dividers on the page. They could have, and should have, just been images. They didn't do anything. Yet someone made them in Flash.

I'd also say all the drop-down menu systems were an overuse. Splash screens on every car company's home page. It was out of hand.

I guess you could call it a victim of it's own success, where once it was time for it to die (due to mobile), very few people were sad to see it go.