I have been maintaining that the rate of change in the computing industry in both hardware and software technology is just increasing slowly, surely and stressfully. I would like to use Flash from Adobe by way of Macromedia as an example. But just take a look at Visual Studio, Oracle DBMS or Intuit QuickBook versions.
Flash has had 10 Flash Players in the last 10 years. Its development software has also gone through a nearly equal number of iterations. See the latest update news here. Yet its hard to keep up – as much code or programing methods are superceded in one to three iterations.
And I just revised my Flash Links page and its sobering to see that a number of excellent Flash Support websites have disappeared. They were 3rd party sites that covered the fast evolving Flash scene. Most of the sites existed just 2-4 years ago and were dynamic and interesting enough to make this resource/links listing page:
ActionScript Toolbox, BannerDesigns, CBTCafe, Flog, Flash Candy, Flash Blog, Flash Composer, Flash Developer, Flash Devils, Flash Forum, Flash Fruit, Flash Guru, Flash MXLibrary, FlashPro, FlasherWeb, iBoost, Macromedia DevCenter(some merger doubts), Mind Avenue(au revoir Axel Edge), RubberDuck,Virtual Fx. Now to be sure many of these sites still exist but have become either stagnant or Google Adsense exploitation sites.
But the real implication is that more than a dozen websites and a number of vendors devoted to Flash and its development have fallen by the way side. I raise this point because part of the problem asociated with Climate Change is not Global Warming so much as global environmental system behaving erratically – very much so with more catastrophic weather, pestilence and other patterns. Is the Flash Turnover a canary warning to IT development?