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.

"You can't use speech synthesis because the speech dispatcher library is missing"

There's a 'learn more' link, but it just talks about getting speech synthesis working in my browser. Searching for the error string returns similar discussions. I don't want to do that (especially if it's some new marketing fad). Obviously it's speech synthesis but *what is it saying?*

The most recent instance was a dell.com product page posted here on HN:

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-ultrasharp-52-thunderbolt-hub-monitor-u5226kw/apd/210-bthw/monitors-monitor-accessories

As lots of people on HN will have visited that link I thought somebody might be able to tell me what they heard?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46665361

Points: 3

# Comments: 4

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

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45061708

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

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 download

About 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.

I do care about accessibility, but this project is poor in that respect. You need JS. If your machine is even a little slow it will probably look like a flip-book animation. My art is available in more accessible formats elsewhere --- this is just a bit of fun.

---

Ok I'm being overly dramatic, art isn't necessarily on the scrapheap.

This past couple of years I've seen my two lifelong loves and skills --- painting and programming --- devalued alongside the rise of LLMs. I've had the knee-jerk reactions, been through the fear, then come to acceptance that we are where we are. The sands have shifted.

I appreciate that for those who haven't (yet?) developed artistic skills it might be satisfying to be able to type a prompt and get an immediate picture. In itself I don't want to deride that, it's a new thing and I'm sure some people will make well of it. Creativity hasn't gone away. And I know the world doesn't owe a living to me or other artists, musicians, writers or practitioners of any craft (including programmers). I do feel sad that it seems to be becoming less cool or worthwhile to spend(/'waste') time deep learning a skill. When I paint I do enjoy the end result and I am working towards it, but the experience is so much more than that. The doing of it is rewarding on such a deep level. I hope we don't lose that feeling as a species and just become detached directors of disembodied action.

Anyway I thought chucking all my artwork into a big virtual pile might be interesting, a bit different to the usual online gallery formats. You have to rummage around to find stuff, like a jumble sale. You might miss some bits. Who cares.

I've been learning some Three.js and wondered how it would cope with the task (over 100 paintings on board, paper, card, stretched canvas). I decided to use Rapier as the physics engine as I'd heard good things about it in terms of performance.

I've only been dipping toes into AI: `sigoden/aichat` (which is really nice) in the terminal, a little Cursor, some experiments with RooCode. I had no experience with WASM or Rapier, not much with Three.js. As a move towards acceptance of the new state of play I decided I'd dive in and try 'vibe-coding' the entire project with Cursor.

I probably don't have anything original to say about working with LLM coding assistants; suffice to say there was awe, disgust, love, hate, and a feeling of loss. I got the job done, it isn't too buggy. I learned a lot about working with LLMs, what they're good at and bad at. I learned a little about Three.js, Rapier and 3D graphics. Gut feeling is that I learned quite a lot less than I would have if I'd waded in the mud myself. How much that matters? I'm honestly not sure.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44443096

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

- 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!

We need to help first time users work out how to use our software, but I don't follow the logic on why we should prioritise around this. I get that we can lose users early on if they are confused by our apps, but that's not the full picture.

For a regular-use app (such as email in the example), what % of a user's time is spent as a new user, vs time spent as a no-longer-new user? Obviously over the lifetime of an app the amount of time spent as a new user is far less than that spent as a non-new user. After a few uses I know where the button is. But the design compromises (eg less space in the UI for content due to the oversize button) persist.

At some point the training wheels on the bike stop helping and start hindering.

This is the same gripe I have with the argument for UI animations "informing the user about what's happening". macOS (which stands out due to its refusal to just add a preference to fully disable animations) has educated me on the concept that an app minimises 'into the dock where it lives' many thousands of times now. I get it, honestly.

Maybe the solution is to have the UI grow in complexity as the user becomes more familiar? After the enlarged 'send' button has been clicked 5 times, reduce its size... maybe even do this gradually, a couple of pixels per click until it reaches 'expert size'. Or have an internal list of user actions and once a few of them have been completed offer to put the UI into intermediate mode?

- 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 20 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!

Of course the web has evolved and has uses other than reading/absorbing information (some of them great) and multimedia content is valid, but it does seem to have become harder to find substance in amongst all the style.

When I'm surfing the web it's still usually words that I'm looking for. I think that may be going out of fashion.