Comment by noduerme

I think it was a very sound decision back in 2007 if you wanted to write once and deploy everywhere. In browser, and on the desktop for Windows and Mac. JS wasn't up to the task of complex SPAs or graphic visualizations yet (<canvas> didn't even exist), and the alternative would have been Java apps which relied on whatever runtime the user had installed. The fact that Flash/AIR could deploy with its own runtime or a browser plugin was huge. It allowed an independent coder like me to maintain multiple large pieces of software across multiple platforms at a time when it was almost unheard of to do that without a team.