[benologist]

I think it still makes sense for two reasons:

1) As a platform Flash may yet survive the web, Adobe has real potential transforming it into a publishing tool rather than publishing + consumption.

2) Adobe themselves are likely to keep their throne in the tools scenario and they probably won't deviate far from the methods they and Macromedia have spent 2 decades discovering / implementing / selling / training people to understand in Flash.

The best although short-lived reason is Flash is a very rewarding platform to work on, there are eleventy billion tutorials and your brother will probably have some simple animations working on day one and that sense of accomplishment is invaluable.

[fractallyte]

While it's probably correct to say that Flash will hang on a while longer (especially in corporate settings, in the form of Flex), Adobe itself can't be relied upon for anything Flash-related.

Their 'open-sourced' tools haven't been updated for the last few years. The most recent Flash 'roadmap' doesn't actually lead anywhere. Finally, Adobe's Thibault Imbert admits that Adobe is now focused on javascript and HTML5: http://www.bytearray.org/?p=5197#comments

Basically, Adobe has quietly abandoned Flash, leaving behind a bunch of bitter developers.