Flash sucked for a lot of things but what it was an unsung hero for was actually being an outlet and onramp for adolescent creativity.
Children online during that era were not just staring into YouTube videos served up by the algorithm they were clicking around Flash compilation sites with animations, games etc and many would eventually pirate a copy of Flash.
The beauty of the tool, especially in the AS2 era was you could open it up and start animating straight away but then to add sounds or loops you had to add little bits of code into the timeline. This was a perfect way for many to start dabbling with and understanding coding.
I think this is a little dismissive of kids today. How many kids actually bothered pirating a copy of Flash vs. just mindless playing bloons tower defense? You could argue that this low stakes gaming has been replaced by phone apps. But kids today are learning from what they watch on youtube: far more kids are making their own videos for their youtube channel or tiktok account and learning about av production in the process, than kids learning flash programming 15 years ago. Sure it starts small with your phone camera, but look at the production quality of some of these influencers: they are investing in good cameras, microphones, lighting, sound proofing, editing software, and that is something you need to learn a little bit about video production to effectively set up, and these are still marketable skills.
Yeah, lots. Back in my primary school days, 3 of us had a pirated copy of Adobe Flash, met up, and tried to learn actionscript and animation after school.
'Adolescent' seems a bit dismissive, although I'm sure you didn't mean it that way.
Flash opened up digital experience creation for a multitude of people of all ages - th emost interactively interesting web rode off the back of Flash for a good decade and more.
Personally I never much liked Flash, and only resorted to it for things that were out of reach of my meagre capabilities, adding to HTML etc.
Children online during that era were not just staring into YouTube videos served up by the algorithm they were clicking around Flash compilation sites with animations, games etc and many would eventually pirate a copy of Flash.
The beauty of the tool, especially in the AS2 era was you could open it up and start animating straight away but then to add sounds or loops you had to add little bits of code into the timeline. This was a perfect way for many to start dabbling with and understanding coding.