Hello Lua
haxe.org
Hello Lua
1–10 of 74 posts
Re: Hello Lua
#2Haxe is one of the best kept secrets of the programming world. Created by none other than the author of curl, it's A C-ish, javascripty, but strictly typed language with almost infinite portability. It "compiles" to many different target languages, from PHP to Java to Python to C++ and more. It's fast, has a beefy standard library, well-documented system interfaces, and just feels fun. A remarkable accomplishment.
Re: Hello Lua
#3Haxe is one of the best kept secrets of the programming world. Created by none other than the author of curl, it's A C-ish, javascripty, but strictly typed language with almost infinite portability. It "compiles" to many different target languages, from PHP to Java to Python to C++ and more. It's fast, has a beefy standard library, well-documented system interfaces, and just feels fun. A remarkable accomplishment.
I agree completely! ... Well, almost agree completely.
Daniel Stenberg is the author of curl: https://daniel.haxx.se/
Nicolas Cannasse is the (main) author of haxe: https://medium.com/@ncannasse
Both are awesome in their own right.
I wrote the Lua target announced here, and am happy to answer any questions.
Re: Hello Lua
#4Haxe is one of the best kept secrets of the programming world. Created by none other than the author of curl, it's A C-ish, javascripty, but strictly typed language with almost infinite portability. It "compiles" to many different target languages, from PHP to Java to Python to C++ and more. It's fast, has a beefy standard library, well-documented system interfaces, and just feels fun. A remarkable accomplishment.
cURL was created by Daniel Stenberg, Haxe was created by Nicolas Cannasse. (EDIT: beaten)
My favourite Haxe feature is compile-time macros. This leads to massive meta-programming and language extension capabilities. My least favourite aspect is that it does not strictly unify or abstract every target language & runtime, so you end up writing in that language's semantics but using Haxe as syntax sugar. (Good for C++, less useful for other targets.)
Re: Hello Lua
#5From Haxe's introduction:
> Its syntax largely follows the ECMAScript standard, but deviates where necessary.
Anyone can tl;dr the main differences to JS?
Re: Hello Lua
#6Haxe is one of the best kept secrets of the programming world. Created by none other than the author of curl, it's A C-ish, javascripty, but strictly typed language with almost infinite portability. It "compiles" to many different target languages, from PHP to Java to Python to C++ and more. It's fast, has a beefy standard library, well-documented system interfaces, and just feels fun. A remarkable accomplishment.
Haxe is what ActionScript should have been. However (imo), it's hard to find a niche for it now. What does it get me that Perl and OCaml don't? I've been drawn to Haxe several times over the years, but have never really thought of a project, "huh, Haxe would be a great fit here". Maybe if I wrote a mobile game or something.
Re: Hello Lua
#7From Haxe's introduction: > Its syntax largely follows the ECMAScript standard, but deviates where necessary. Anyone can tl;dr the main differences to JS?
It's much closer to ActionScript and ES4 than to ES5 or ES6/2015/Next/Harmony/Trickshot.LegitScript/whatever the latest ECMAScript standard is. The main difference is probably decent macro support.
There's always the Cookbook (http://code.haxe.org/category/beginner/index.html) if you want to see for yourself.
Re: Hello Lua
#8Haxe is one of the best kept secrets of the programming world. Created by none other than the author of curl, it's A C-ish, javascripty, but strictly typed language with almost infinite portability. It "compiles" to many different target languages, from PHP to Java to Python to C++ and more. It's fast, has a beefy standard library, well-documented system interfaces, and just feels fun. A remarkable accomplishment.
Haxe is what ActionScript should have been. However (imo), it's hard to find a niche for it now. What does it get me that Perl and OCaml don't? I've been drawn to Haxe several times over the years, but have never really thought of a project, "huh, Haxe would be a great fit here". Maybe if I wrote a mobile game or something.
The reason we started using it at work was we could target both Javascript and Flash from the one codebase.
However, we finally don't need to support flash anymore... so now there's no reason to not just write in javascript.
Re: Hello Lua
#9Haxe is one of the best kept secrets of the programming world. Created by none other than the author of curl, it's A C-ish, javascripty, but strictly typed language with almost infinite portability. It "compiles" to many different target languages, from PHP to Java to Python to C++ and more. It's fast, has a beefy standard library, well-documented system interfaces, and just feels fun. A remarkable accomplishment.
Haxe is what ActionScript should have been. However (imo), it's hard to find a niche for it now. What does it get me that Perl and OCaml don't? I've been drawn to Haxe several times over the years, but have never really thought of a project, "huh, Haxe would be a great fit here". Maybe if I wrote a mobile game or something.
Haxe is really a formidable little virus. It does a lot of small things nicely, but doesn't have a single knock-out feature that you can trot out during language comparisons.
However, all those little features add up over time and become addictive. You start really missing them when you go back to other languages. In the back of your mind you think of how you might solve something simply with abstracts or macros, or how you might easily reduce the file size or execution speed with dead code elimination or inlining.
I would choose Haxe over Perl because of Haxe's expressive type extension capabilities. I could add useful methods to string or array types, and make the resulting code short and sweet (although perhaps less readable for others).
I would choose Haxe over OCaml and I would gain Haxe's superior compiler error messages. I would also get to move seamlessly between functional and imperative programming styles, and still get to use ADTs.
Re: Hello Lua
#10Haxe is one of the best kept secrets of the programming world. Created by none other than the author of curl, it's A C-ish, javascripty, but strictly typed language with almost infinite portability. It "compiles" to many different target languages, from PHP to Java to Python to C++ and more. It's fast, has a beefy standard library, well-documented system interfaces, and just feels fun. A remarkable accomplishment.
I agree completely! ... Well, almost agree completely. Daniel Stenberg is the author of curl: https://daniel.haxx.se/ Nicolas Cannasse is the (main) author of haxe: https://medium.com/@ncannasse Both are awesome in their own right. I wrote the Lua target announced here, and am happy to answer any questions.
Meanwhile, Daniel also did a C-like language back in the day: FPL. It's never seen widespread use, but was the macro-language for his editor, FrexxEd, for the Amiga.