Joined 10 years ago
Part of the beauty of working with Flash, at least as a newcomer or someone who leaned more towards graphics/animation than code, came down to a couple of main points:
- Code was *inside* MovieClips (in Flash [almost] everything was a MovieClip, basically a timeline of frames). Code was attached to frames. When the playhead entered the frame, the script would run. Some of us who started as designers later leaned heavily into the code, but even those who were more comfortable sticking to the visual side of things would end up with a little grab bag full of scripts/snippets that they could just copy/paste into a frame and tweak without getting too bogged down with code. Even at a very simple level (if somethingsomething jump to frame 20, else loop back to frame one) this added a dimension of control and interactivity. Crucially, it was implemented well and very simple to understand.
- Everything was nested. MovieClips within MovieClips. Timelines within timelines. Simple behaviours could be stacked up and lead to natural-feeling complexity just due to this nesting.
Of course these things can be implemented today too, and other tools have and do implement versions of them. But there are often just 1 or 2 levels of abstraction too much, enough to put off some kinds of minds, or people at certain levels of experience. The thing about the Flash experience was that it all felt so fluid and intuitive. Direct. Learning it was fun.
Animate (as far as I remember) did keep those paradigms I mentioned. The timelines were still there, the drawing/animation tools too. But something somehow goes wrong in the translation to modern web tech. If it didn't, people would have just carried on using Flash, outputting JS/HTML instead of SWFs and nobody would have noticed.
A lot of the above is testament to Macromedia and linked to their other software, Director (similar to Flash but aimed more at desktop and 'interactive CDs'). They made software that was a joy to use. To give them their dues, Adobe pushed it further. Also their market dominance meant if you wanted to get into this web stuff and make cool things, Flash was *the* (only, really) way to do it. Which makes me think it may have been a time and place thing, which we won't get back. The modern web and range of options maybe makes it too diffuse, harder for something new to catch on. I hope I'm wrong.
As others have said here though, maybe stuff like MineCraft and Roblox are filling a similar conceptual gap for different generations and I'm just old and nostalgic.
I'm on a Debian, so that ties in with what you mentioned.
It's easy to get rid of the error, I was more just curious. Thought maybe mainstream websites had started blasting speech at users as soon as they arrived.
Coder/artist. I'm looking for projects, retainers or put me on your contacts list to cover your overspill:
* All kinds of web stuff
* Flutter for multi-platform apps
* Media processing + editing
* Documentation
---
Portfolio: https://mm-dev.rocks/portfolio
CV: https://mm-dev.rocks/mm-dev-cv.pdf
3D pile of my art: https://mm-dev.rocks/jumble
Blog: https://mm-dev.rocks
Git repo: https://codeberg.org/mm-dev
I'm a coder and an artist, guaranteed* 49th percentile in both fields. For certain roles this absolutely makes me an acceptable choice.
I live in a caravan, powered by the sun on a sheep farm in Wales. Consistently hitting 98% uptime for both power and connectivity --- the numbers don't lie.
I'm looking for projects, retainers or put me on your contacts list to cover your overspill:
* All kinds of web stuff
* Flutter for multi-platform apps
* Media processing + editing
* Documentation
---
CV: https://mm-dev.rocks/mm-dev-cv.pdf
Portfolio: https://mm-dev.rocks/portfolio
Apps showreel (2 mins): https://mm-dev.rocks/apps-showreel
Games showreel (2 mins): https://mm-dev.rocks/games-showreel
3D pile of my art: https://mm-dev.rocks/jumble
Blog: https://mm-dev.rocks
Git repo: https://codeberg.org/mm-dev
---
* Non-binding
Termux is as great terminal, AFAIK it can be run on any modern (not even that modern) Android. With that alone you can get most common Linux terminal packages, run vim (including LSPs), tmux, ranger, compile C/C++, Python, Go, Rust...
Termux-X11 lets you run X11/GUI apps. It has settings to properly capture mouse (trackball in my case) and keyboard, preventing annoyances by disabling Android default keys (eg allowing Alt-tab to switch tabs in your Linux desktop rather than switching between Android tasks).
Termux proot-distro lets you install loads of Linux distros. I've daily driven Ubuntu in the past, currently using Debian Bookworm on my Tab S8 Ultra, which although a flagship is a couple of generations old now. I run the same setup on a Tab S4, which is a 7 year old device now. It's slow for some GUI stuff but works well for a lot of things, most stuff in the terminal is great.
The above is without root. With root, I've recently changed over to chroot as I wanted to try it.
You can get GPU acceleration, I'm currently using turnip, there are also virgl drivers, it can take some trial and error depending on which GPU your device has (I don't know much about GPU stuff so if any of those sentences had errors that's why, but it's perfectly googlable).
As I just rebuilt my system a few days ago, here's what I've done since then:
- Installed Debian Bookworm
- Installed Chromium and Firefox, both with GPU acceleration via a custom command eg: `Exec=env MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=zink /usr/bin/chromium %U` in a .desktop file
- Compiled yazi (Rust terminal file manager) with rustup and `cargo install`ed another couple of apps
- Been working on a Hugo site, after installing go and dart-sass
- Compiled dwm with standard gcc stuff (dwm is my preferred environment but XFCE etc are around too)
- Worked on some PSDs in Photopea (Krita, Gimp, Inkscape also all work perfectly)
- Installed my preferred vim setup with nvim-coc, so all the LSPs etc
What I'm trying to say is, it's strange for me to see so many in this thread wondering about if it's possible to do Linux stuff on Android. I thought Termux was pretty well known (?). I think the first time I installed a full Linux distro on Android was about 10 years ago via LinuxDeploy. I've been daily driving a setup similar to the above for maybe 5 years, on 3 or 4 different devices. I get that this is geeky and a bit niche but I'm surprised to see so many comments on HN without this stuff being mentioned.
I have a Macbook which I use begrudgingly when I have to (Apple lock-in reasons such as needing to compile Flutter stuff for iOS/Mac on Apple hardware --- btw Flutter works well on my Android Debian compiled for ARM64 Linux, meaning I can do most Flutter dev work here and just move over to the other hardware when I want to compile/test other architectures). I have an AMD ProxMox machine for when I need a bit more grunt or have something that requires Windows. Despite these other machines, if I can do it on the Android tablet I always prefer it (love the OLED display and low power usage), meaning 70-80% (guessing) of my work gets done there.
Docker can't/won't work, something to do with proot/chroot and cgroups I think. In my limited experience (Flutter), cross-compiling to different architectures hasn't worked. The OOM killer in Android can be annoying so you want a device with plenty of RAM, but there are ways to mitigate it, and in practice it doesn't bother me (rare and relatively inconsequential in my usage patterns) otherwise I wouldn't work this way.
I get that people in here today are mainly talking about phones, and I'm using tablets. But this all works on phones (I used to do it on my Note 3 up until I lost it a few months ago, that's over 10 years old). You just need a device which outputs video over USB-C, not uncommon nowadays.
I have had to faff a bit to get stuff working. Some people will hate this and just want instant. Horses for courses, I'm happy.
I haven't tried the new Linux stuff on Android 15 as I don't have a Pixel. I get the feeling it won't have much if anything to offer over my current setup and might be slower. But hopefully it will become standard in future. I don't like Dex on Samsung as it forces its own UI sensibilities on you (eg last time I tried it windows had huge ugly titlebars, which I personally don't like, hence dwm preference).
I've probably spilled most of the beans in this novel of a comment, but have written about this stuff before, here https://mm-dev.rocks/posts/android-as-a-dev-environment/intr...
- search for book
- tap a result
- see a list of links to download mirrors (under 'slow downloads'), tap a link
- get a countdown timer
- timer expires, download links appear
- click a link, book downloads just like any other downloadAbout BIC, I thought I'd seens some tests online showing that over time the ink yellowed and eventually disappeared, so I've been avoiding them.
Clearly I need to look more deeply into it, especially for work I might sell.
- Vanilla JS/HTML/CSS - Flutter/Dart - Monkey C (Garmin) - Hugo/Go - PHP, SQL - Python - WordPress + Plugins - Image/audio/video editing
CV: mm-dev.rocks/mm-dev-cv.pdf
Email: In CV
I'm Mark, I've over 15 years industry experience working with startups, household names, solo entrepreneurs. I live semi off-grid in my touring caravan, currently in South Wales. I've been working on my own open source projects for a while and want to get back amongst it.
Non-code skills:
- Communication: translate ideas from inside your head into a buildable plan
- Manage expectations, understand priorities, keep you in the loop
- I'm a generalist from art/design origins
Linux/Windows/Android/MacOS/iOS.
Interested in repairability and getting the most out of cheaper, lower-powered devices.
Seeking:
- Short-term, full-time projects - Longer part-time commitments (eg 1-2 days a week, few hours a month, retainer) - Agency overspill - Open to other ideas!