[Wall of text warning] Well, heated or not, I'm learning a lot of AIR/AS3/Adobe/Flash Player/Animate CC/Starling/Feathers behind the scenes stuff with all this discussion. I've been using Flash/Animate/AS3 for years, but never have been an active member of this or any other forum or community project of AS3/AIR related subject. I think is undeniable that there is this "Flash is dead" ghost scaring developers everywhere, but reading all the comments here I'm more confident than ever that AS3 and AIR are still one of the best technologies to cross platform development, despite this annoying JavaScript frameworks flood and developers preconception. Like it or not, code using AS3 nowadays makes you look some kind of noob-weirdo that is stuck in the past. We know this is entirely false. I've been using, testing and researching several frameworks/engines and what I'm seeing is that AIR development still has the best balance between easy of usage, power, and versatility. I don't have the expertise to say if Flash Player or AIR are really secure, but I can say that, as already pointed here, it's totally possible to create really, really great apps and games with Animate CC/AIR/AS3 with great performance for mobile or desktop. My suggestions are: - Adobe should really invest more on Animate CC. Bringing more features for game developers. This last update didn't add anything, unfortunately. Again, Animate CC is one-of-a-kind. It can draw like any other software, it can animate, and code. No other tool I ever tested can do this or at least can do this as Animate does. But, of course, as with any other tool, it can and must be improved with new features. - Adobe should encourage add-ons extensions developers. I always see people asking for features in the forum that could easily be implemented with a JSFL script or with custom panels, but there are so many few doing this kind of stuff and most of what has been produced is really old. I'm developing, for example, a tool to make the creation of game tiles inside of Animate more easily. I want to create a panel to help designers code their games and apps. And so on. Is not that hard and there is a lot that can be done. But there are pratically no incentive. - I'm not really a experienced programmer so I think using and coding ANEs are really difficult. Why is there no official Adobe ANEs to access all kind of features of Google Play, for example? I know there are some great websites producing ANEs, like MyFlashLabs and Milkman, but they are too expensive and many like me can't afford to buy all of those goodies. I'm developing a game for Android devices that I can't launch because I'm waiting for the AIR team to solve a conflict between two third party ANEs I'm using. - Adobe NEEDS to tell us that it cares about AIR/AS3 developers. What happened on Adobe MAX to tell us this? Nothing. Animate has been updated and a single word hasn't been said about this in the main show. Adobe seems to be focusing on print, photo, video, and UX, but game development? Nah, forget it. - This forum... Maybe it's because I didn't look further, but it seems to me to be more of a Q&A type. Where are the community production? Like any other technology forums, where are the developers showcasing their finalized works, WIPs, giving tips, working in collaborative projects, discussing related and random stuff? A strong community makes a strong product. - The OpenFL and HaxeFlixel communities seem to be making a great work. Why not give official support to these guys? AIR, Animate, and AS3 are awesome, but underrated because of preconception, misinformation and lack of incentive.
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