Comment by ethbr1

Flash was the original web Excel (also Lotus 1-2-3) -- a simultaneous design + data + programming tool.

These are terrible for maintainability, but excellent for usability.

On the whole, I'd say it was easily a loss for the greater web that web programming left the citizen-programmer behind. (By requiring them all to turn into hamfisted front-end javascript programmers...)

Many of the centralized evils of the current web might have been avoided if there had remained an onramp for the neophyte to really create for the web.

I.e. Facebook et al. might have instead been replaced by a hosted, better-indexed Macromedia create + edit + host platform

Or the amount of shit code produced by inexperienced front-end devs throwing spaghetti at IE might have been reduced