Youtube ends flash support for good

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

I guess maybe this has something to do with Adobe ending flash by 2020

I still used youtube on an older system for streaming stuff like a TV, but html5 has way too many frame drops and uses like twice the processing power as watching a video through flash. Hate this forced upgrade $#@!, just like trying to go onto a website and it says you need the new browser, which you already upgraded like a month ago when they gave you the same message -_-

[fisharmor]

I generally hate HTML5 sites.
Two examples, Netflix and Pandora, went to HTML5.
As a result each one is now cursed with a bad interface. Both of them used to be really easily navigable and user friendly.
It's as if the HTML5 specs direct programmers to make their sites $#@!ty and confusing in addition to needlessly adding background video, needlessly resizing objects on focus, and otherwise hamstringing any efforts to actually DO anything with it.

[specsaregood]

I generally hate HTML5 sites.
Two examples, Netflix and Pandora, went to HTML5.
As a result each one is now cursed with a bad interface. Both of them used to be really easily navigable and user friendly.
It's as if the HTML5 specs direct programmers to make their sites $#@!ty and confusing in addition to needlessly adding background video, needlessly resizing objects on focus, and otherwise hamstringing any efforts to actually DO anything with it.

nuff said, but I hate flash as well so to hell with it all.

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

I honestly don't understand how technology takes a step back every single moment it gets the opportunity. On the same system I can watch 1080p video on the monitor with no lag at all, but if I tried that on youtube with the html 5 player, it's like I'm trying to play a 3d computer game on a windows 95 pc.

[specsaregood]

I honestly don't understand how technology takes a step back every single moment it gets the opportunity. On the same system I can watch 1080p video on the monitor with no lag at all, but if I tried that on youtube with the html 5 player, it's like I'm trying to play a 3d computer game on a windows 95 pc.

because engineers aren't in charge, somewhere, hell everywhere, there are people with English lit, communications, business, or physical ed degrees telling engineers what to do. glad I could clear that up for you

[oyarde]

because engineers aren't in charge, somewhere, hell everywhere, there are people with English lit, communications, business, or physical ed degrees telling engineers what to do. glad I could clear that up for you

English lit , lol . I always wondered what they did for a living .

[shakey1]

I honestly don't understand how technology takes a step back every single moment it gets the opportunity.

Everything is going as planned.

[fisharmor]

I honestly don't understand how technology takes a step back every single moment it gets the opportunity. On the same system I can watch 1080p video on the monitor with no lag at all, but if I tried that on youtube with the html 5 player, it's like I'm trying to play a 3d computer game on a windows 95 pc.

The answer is as simple as it is stupefying.

All programmers know that the first key virtue of a good programmer is laziness.

Larry Wall originally defined this as:
" The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. "

Since he wrote that, however, it manifested itself in a very ugly way. Programming these days is much less an exercise in helping people solve actual problems. It's an exercise primarily in how to make sure that programmers don't have to rewrite things, ever.

I'll use a modern example - the last phone game I actually played a lot. It's called War Robots. It's probably the most sophisticated game, technically, I've ever seen on a phone.
I stopped playing it after the "update" that came out a couple months ago. It was a major update that was hailed for a lot of interface changes.
The game was a little over 3 years old when they announced it, and I knew exactly what was going on. The garage project had rocketed to fame, made a $#@! ton of money, and now was causing developers slowly to go insane from trying to maintain it.

It was written using older programming methods, because those programming methods are the only way you can get a phone to play a 3d game where 12 players are chucking missiles at each other and still have particle effects. And three years is the sell-by date for a project like that.

And they messed around with stuff like the physics - it's different enough that I don't like it anymore. But it had to happen, because otherwise they would have introduced serious bugs at some point. It was a smart business move to do a total rewrite.

BUT, most businesses think the smarter business move is to write it right the first time. And they'd be right... except that writing it right the first time is impossible. There are always going to be changes.

So modern business apps, things that don't require 12 players chucking missiles in 3d, and that includes YouTube - they all sacrifice some processing power for convenience. That convenience can't be overstated - the YouTube rewrite, for instance, was probably planned to last for at least 10 years and probably more like 15 or even 20.

They gain this convenience by writing things in a way analogous to building an entire house out of Legos. Sure, it can be done. And it would be stupid easy to do things like make additions or rearrange walls. But think about what your house would look like - the walls would be several times thicker than necessary, and as you build a bigger house, the engineering problem becomes much bigger and requires way more resources than doing it traditionally. Modern developers don't care. They want their Legos.

Sometimes "some" sacrificed processing power equates to "most". Especially when you're running older hardware. They knew before they ever started writing the rewrite that you were going to be $#@!ed. They made the conscious decision to $#@! you.

And it kind of makes sense that they did. You're an outlier. Most people are still buying laptops every three years. The rewritten software will run on laptops whose batteries already went bad twice. That's really all they care about.

It's also why I don't program anymore. I can't take it. I know what's possible on that 10 year old hardware and I know nobody's using it to its fullest extent. And I cry every time I see the way modern hardware is simply squandered.

I see it first hand every day - operations that I witnessed taking 90 seconds in 2004, taking DAYS today. But at least they don't need to do rewrites.

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

Yeah that all makes sense. It's just like how so many websites suck complete ass because they use content management systems. There was a time when every time I tried to go onto any website made with wordpress, my entire $#@!ing browser would just lock up completely. It's a scourge to the Internet. Yet, every time I designed a website, coding it all without using anything like dreamweaver back in the old days or wordpress today, it runs smooth as butter. Even an empty page on wordpress loads slower than a page full of graphics written with clean html, css, and javascript

[specsaregood]

because engineers aren't in charge, somewhere, hell everywhere, there are people with English lit, communications, business, or physical ed degrees telling engineers what to do. glad I could clear that up for you

I rest my case.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-m-93069a/

[pcosmar]

I honestly don't understand how technology takes a step back every single moment it gets the opportunity.

Proprietary Software.

"Adobe" Discontinued support for Linux a while back. Open Source had taken over where thy dropped it.

And with all the security flawed operating systems.,, it is a time bomb.

[TheTexan]

I rest my case.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-m-93069a/

Says the guy with male privilege. -rep