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The Joy of Haxe

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Re: The Joy of Haxe

#21

Post by segmondy »

cryptica wrote: post #2

Haxe is strange in that it seems to be very well known among developers but relatively very few actually use it. I guess it's an old project with very specific use cases; like building certain kinds of multi-platform apps. It's nice to see a project with such a dedicated community. It's a shame that most developers started using TypeScript instead of Haxe; that seems like a missed opportunity. TypeScript was pretty p…

I really disliked Javascript and swore of it no matter how much it took over the world till typescript. If typescript is not enough, I'll use another language go/python and use web assembly to generate js. js is a byte code to me. However, the advantage of typescript is that I can pull in a js lib and use it.

Re: The Joy of Haxe

#22

Post by russellbeattie »

m_sahaf wrote: post #6
sdegutis wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well TypeScript also had a huge corporation with infinite budget and a large full time team of contributors and evangelists which probably helped adoption.

Counter-example: Dart. If corporate support is a definite factor, Dart would have taken off way earlier than now. A bigger factor in TypeScript's success would be the ability to gradually migrate the projects as it's a superset of JavaScript. How do you start migrating? Flip the file extensions from .js to .ts with loose compiler options, then gradually add typing as the options are tightened. It's factors like these…

Classic Microsoft: Embrace, extend, extinguish. God I hate Typescript!

Re: The Joy of Haxe

#23

Post by haxiomic »

segmondy wrote: post #21
cryptica wrote: post #2

Haxe is strange in that it seems to be very well known among developers but relatively very few actually use it. I guess it's an old project with very specific use cases; like building certain kinds of multi-platform apps. It's nice to see a project with such a dedicated community. It's a shame that most developers started using TypeScript instead of Haxe; that seems like a missed opportunity. TypeScript was pretty p…

I really disliked Javascript and swore of it no matter how much it took over the world till typescript. If typescript is not enough, I'll use another language go/python and use web assembly to generate js. js is a byte code to me. However, the advantage of typescript is that I can pull in a js lib and use it.

Same with haxe, you can use an untyped js lib with the `untyped` keyword [0] or use an extern to enable strict typing[1] (like TypeScript's d.ts)

[0] https://haxe.org/manual/target-javascript-injection.html

[1] https://haxe.org/manual/target-javascript-external-libraries...

Re: The Joy of Haxe

#24

Post by pjmlp »

m_sahaf wrote: post #6
sdegutis wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well TypeScript also had a huge corporation with infinite budget and a large full time team of contributors and evangelists which probably helped adoption.

Counter-example: Dart. If corporate support is a definite factor, Dart would have taken off way earlier than now. A bigger factor in TypeScript's success would be the ability to gradually migrate the projects as it's a superset of JavaScript. How do you start migrating? Flip the file extensions from .js to .ts with loose compiler options, then gradually add typing as the options are tightened. It's factors like these…

Dart suffered from corporate politics, Chrome team wasn't really into it, got rescued by Ad Words team, and now are trying to become relevant outside Google with help Flutter.

If Chrome team actually cared about Dart and went ahead with Dartium's integration, Dart's future would have been much different.

Then the Angular team decided to dump Dart and go with Typescript.

So politics as usual.

Re: The Joy of Haxe

#25

Post by pjmlp »

redisman wrote: post #7
m_sahaf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-example: Dart. If corporate support is a definite factor, Dart would have taken off way earlier than now. A bigger factor in TypeScript's success would be the ability to gradually migrate the projects as it's a superset of JavaScript. How do you start migrating? Flip the file extensions from .js to .ts with loose compiler options, then gradually add typing as the options are tightened. It's factors like these…

Has Dart taken off? I think most people recoiled in horror when they saw the early-days "hello world" turn into millions of lines of generated code.

Only inside Google on the Ad Words team that kind of rescued Dart after the Chrome team stop caring about Dartium.

Now the Flutter project is Dart's last hope to keep it relevant outside Google.

It remains to be seen how serious Google is about Flutter, as the Android team only gives political correct answers when inquired about Flutter vs Android.

Re: The Joy of Haxe

#26

Post by dyarosla »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #20
dyarosla wrote: post #12

Like the author, I too have the same opinion after having used Haxe for over 5 years. Five years on from starting with Haxe at FontStruct, I’m genuinely surprised to find that I feel no regret whatsoever regarding our decision to go with the technology. I absolutely adore the language. Not only is it awesome at transpiling/compiling to native across this whole spectrum of targets, the language itself keeps surprising…

I’ve only had the opposite experience. I worked on a team that inherited a large Haxe codebase for an online education tool, and we found Haxe to be exceedingly bad, even apart fron the nature of the code we inherited. We spent a lot of time porting most of it to a mix of Scala and Javascript. I still remember the daily emotional stress of working in Haxe. ... shudders

What was bad specifically? This comment reads more of a ‘the codebase we inherited sucked to rewrite’ than anything else.

Re: The Joy of Haxe

#27

Post by coldtea »

cryptica wrote: post #2

Haxe is strange in that it seems to be very well known among developers but relatively very few actually use it. I guess it's an old project with very specific use cases; like building certain kinds of multi-platform apps. It's nice to see a project with such a dedicated community. It's a shame that most developers started using TypeScript instead of Haxe; that seems like a missed opportunity. TypeScript was pretty p…

>Haxe is strange in that it seems to be very well known among developers but relatively very few actually use it.

So like Lisp, Scheme, Haskell, ML and so on?

Re: The Joy of Haxe

#28

Post by coldtea »

russellbeattie wrote: post #22
m_sahaf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-example: Dart. If corporate support is a definite factor, Dart would have taken off way earlier than now. A bigger factor in TypeScript's success would be the ability to gradually migrate the projects as it's a superset of JavaScript. How do you start migrating? Flip the file extensions from .js to .ts with loose compiler options, then gradually add typing as the options are tightened. It's factors like these…

Classic Microsoft: Embrace, extend, extinguish. God I hate Typescript!

Was this response sent from 1998 via a time machine?

Re: The Joy of Haxe

#29

Post by skybrian »

thrower123 wrote: post #16
m_sahaf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-example: Dart. If corporate support is a definite factor, Dart would have taken off way earlier than now. A bigger factor in TypeScript's success would be the ability to gradually migrate the projects as it's a superset of JavaScript. How do you start migrating? Flip the file extensions from .js to .ts with loose compiler options, then gradually add typing as the options are tightened. It's factors like these…

It never felt like Google was really committed to Dart the way that Microsoft is going in on Typescript. My recollection is a little hazy, but I want to think Dart originated in the Flash/Silverlight era, when plugins were still an accepted way to do things, then Chrome flirted with adding native runtime support reminiscent of ancient IE VBScript, then things pivoted to chasing the compile-to-JS trend after CoffeeScr…

No, plugins were already on the way out when Dart was released.

In short, some folks at Google had ambitions for Dart to eventually become a web standard with an interpreter built in to browsers, with compile-to-JavaScript used for the transition. That was a radical, unpopular idea and didn't happen even for Chrome, but Dart lives on as a nice compile-to-JavaScript language, and has new life on mobile due to Flutter.

Microsoft had a much more conservative strategy with Typescript and executed on it better. Having modest goals was a big win there.

Re: The Joy of Haxe

#30

Post by Lerc »

I used haxe a lot in the past, but with the newer enhancements to JavaScript I found that I ended up using JavaScript. Destructuring assignment arrow functions and more concise object literals, ... operator enable much more concise and readable code.

Haxe seems to be much more conservative in development. Haze is aquiring arrow functions but I think there was quite a degree of initial resistance to the notion. I proposed a change to allow the new Javascript style consice object literals (simply allowing {fish,cheese} instead of {fish:fish,cheese:cheese} but was shut down with a 'we don't like it'

I would prefer to use a independent language over one developed by a megacorp, but I fear Haxe will fall behind TypeScript due to their resistance to change.

My own personal experience has motivate me to move to something else. The proposal I mentioned above left somewhat of a bad taste. The process went contrary to the processes listed. Notably The proposer is supposed to call a vote after discussion had concluded. Instead it was just shut down with a "we had a meeting and decided against it". I could give no counterargument because there was no argument to counter. I'm not against languages having a dictatorial model for development, but having a facade of an open process that carries no weight seems wrong.

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