Flashback

(And before you ask: they were very interactive, so exporting them as movies doesn’t work. And yes, I know of workarounds and projects to convert it, but it’s all very limited and unsatisfactory)

It was the best of tools, it was the worst of tools.

All I did was Flash for the first 10 years of my career. I have fond memories.

Whoa.

So many hours spent/wasted trying to master that glorious mess.

I had a lot of fun with it, mercifully never professionally. Indeed feels like 100 years ago.

I had a tech career because of Flash. I completely understand when you describe it as awful, yet fantastic.

"This not only feels so long ago, but it’s almost like a parallel reality" is exactly how I feel.

In terms of reviving old projects, the Ruffle Emulator works shockingly well: https://ruffle.rs/
It's definitely worth a look. I'm in the middle of reviving a ton of my early Flash experiments and they basically all work:
https://www.hirmes.com/bliss...
but in seeing them alive again, it did indeed feel dizzying, going so far back to a forgotten time, a hazy past life.