undefined | Better HN

0 pointsmejutoco3mo ago0 comments

It was also leaking memory, which made it very unsuitable for anything long running (like long-running screen displays, ask me how I know).

0 comments

noduerme3mo ago

This is a misconception. AS3 actually had great garbage collection, and solidly written AS3 code did not leak.

mejutocoOP3mo ago

Flex player leaked memory like a sieve. After one day or so it would hang the computer. Maybe it was wrongly written, but leak it did. I have experienced it first hand.

Maybe it was the standalone flex player instead of the web Flash player?

noduerme3mo ago

I don't know about a standalone Flex player, I don't think such a thing existed. Maybe you mean standalone Flash player. I didn't use Flex components. I coded in pure AS3. I had critical business code that ran nonstop for years on end in AIR on dozens of deployments without memory leaks. Again, I think that badly written AS3 code (or bad components) could definitely take down a player fairly quickly. Garbage collection required you to track and clean up weak references, but it's the same thing in Javascript. You had to know the lifecycle of your components and what you were doing.

mejutocoOP3mo ago

It is possible I was holding it wrong. I do not doubt your experience, but it was very easy to write things that leaked memory in Flash, and it was impossible to remove those leaks sometimes. I was part of a project where a lot of effort went into removing references etc and it was still not working. We had to have 2 instances restarting each other. It was a mess. Maybe we can agree those were "bad components".

I blame the runtime. The quality of the code was good. It was not normal.

A few sources of people complaining about the same, some from hn with the same solution I had to adopt, some from CVE, some from users:

- https://community.adobe.com/questions-638/flash-player-23-24...

- https://advisories.checkpoint.com/defense/advisories/public/...

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813026

> The memory leaks were so bad that Adobe advised us to just restart the app periodically

- https://blog.gskinner.com/archives/2005/10/major_flash_pla.h...

- https://support.mozilla.org/bm/questions/931671

lukan3mo ago

My memory is a bit fuzzy, do not remember flex player, did you mean AIR?

(Flash for desktop, with file access)

mejutocoOP3mo ago

That was what I meant indeed.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

noduerme3mo ago

This is a misconception. AS3 actually had great garbage collection, and solidly written AS3 code did not leak.

mejutocoOP3mo ago

Flex player leaked memory like a sieve. After one day or so it would hang the computer. Maybe it was wrongly written, but leak it did. I have experienced it first hand.

Maybe it was the standalone flex player instead of the web Flash player?

noduerme3mo ago

mejutocoOP3mo ago

I blame the runtime. The quality of the code was good. It was not normal.

A few sources of people complaining about the same, some from hn with the same solution I had to adopt, some from CVE, some from users:

- https://community.adobe.com/questions-638/flash-player-23-24...

- https://advisories.checkpoint.com/defense/advisories/public/...

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813026

> The memory leaks were so bad that Adobe advised us to just restart the app periodically

- https://blog.gskinner.com/archives/2005/10/major_flash_pla.h...

- https://support.mozilla.org/bm/questions/931671

lukan3mo ago

My memory is a bit fuzzy, do not remember flex player, did you mean AIR?

(Flash for desktop, with file access)

mejutocoOP3mo ago

That was what I meant indeed.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse