Being a ‘Flash developer’, it seems not a day goes by where I don’t hear about the impending doom of one of my favorite technologies. Especially among my peers who have not touched a lick of AS3, it is hard to explain exactly why I enjoy working in Flash so much. I believe this is one front that has not yet been adequately addressed, especially considering how ‘open’ any piece of HTML5 & Javascript can be compared to a compiled SWF. With a bit of web knowledge & a right-click, one can see the entirety of a webapp and learn from it quickly. I find myself doing it a lot on the examples for paper.js.
Leaving aside Flash Player performance (which alternatively either leaves a lot to be desired, or works suprisingly well), the major argument between developers is “What is Flash good for?”. Those who have not had a chance to play with the system will never know its strengths versus its weaknesses. If Flash developers wish to cast it in a good light, it would be wise to let people know what makes Flash so awesome. I would say it would be best to give them a chance to play around with it in as easily-approachable way.
I’ve spent the past few months exploring programming languages and different texts on programming in my best effort to shore up any deficiencies I have when it comes to busting out code. During that time, I have found a number of awesome sites that let me get straight to the fun parts of learning: typing in some code and seeing it run. I’ve gone through the tutorials on tryruby.org & tryhaskell.org. I have a few projects up on jsfiddle.net that were great for lunchtime coding experiments. And, perhaps best for the Flash community, there exists wonder.fl, which takes AS3 and compiles it for you without the need to download anything else.
In my mind, the best way to show the strengths of Flash to a developer audience would be to take the tech behind wonder.fl, and combine it with a detailed walkthrough similar to tryruby.org. Including a number of powerful libraries for the user to build with would show them how awesome our community is, and the giant shoulders they could stand upon should the need arise. Getting a decent dev to create a site with this tech in half an hour wouldn’t be too bad, and would let them understand just why AS3 is a great tool when you need to write once, run in a lot of places, and look cool.