Dear readers, geeks, hackers, and non geeks (don’t be afraid), hello to you!
The moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived (ahem …)! You will finally know why our mapping engine uses JavaScript instead of Flash (Yeah I can hear you saying “wow, dude you’re kidding, I’ve been expecting this for so long…”). Well, shortly put it’s assassination day!
As you’ll surely notice, I’ll try to be as objective as possible throughout this post. So without having you wait any longer, here are the + of each technology:
The case for JavaScript
- Natively available in any browsers (no need to install anything) and compatible with mobile devices (iPad, iPhone & the like);
- Easy to learn and widespread among developers, thus easy to share;
- Allows you to do almost everything;
- Has a good community on the Web.
The case for Flash
- Unstable, it crashes often and especially on Mac OS and Linux;
- Has security breaches;
- Resource-guzzling;
- Licensed, and therefore paying.
I will dwell on the last point, the rest is quiet obvious.
Flash, a licensed language
When we say that Flash is licensed, it means it belongs to someone (Say what?), In this case Adobe.
Imagine what would have happened if Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C, decided to make its language licensed…
Adobe owns this language, that’s why those who want to develop in Flash have to pay royalties. Thus Flash is less “sharable”, which is one major barrier to progress and collective intelligence.
Imagine what would have happened if Dennis Ritchie – inventor of C and Unix co-dev – decided to make its language licensed. C is used everywhere (computers, modern phones, DVD players), your operating system would look like this:
And you would play Snake on a phone like this (good luck to see your score):
IT and Lifestyle
This computing philosophy is contrary to mine and that of TalkMap. It was impossible for us to think, without shedding tears, to use Flash in our core technology.
I invite you to read this article “Why Software Should Not Have Owners” in order to better understand the issues I tackle in this article.
At the end of the day, just one thought for my man Dennis Ritchie (who died October 12, 2011), and whose death went unnoticed compared to that of Steve Jobs. However, he certainly contributed more to change the world than the former head of Apple.
