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HaXe - Code Once. Deploy Everywhere.

haxe.org

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Re: HaXe - Code Once. Deploy Everywhere.

#51

Post by ternaryoperator »

malkia wrote: post #48
troymc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, this was the promise of C, and it was largely realized: there are C compilers for almost every platform. (You can even use Emscripten to "compile" C to JavaScript, but don't expect miracles.)

I think there was no promise of C. There were two guys that needed somewhat portable compiler to avoid tying them to one system for their ubiquitous by now operating system. Kernighan, Richie, UNIX and C. Or to take more lighthearted - If there really was promise, there would've not been need for a preprocessor.

That's right, And even putting aside the preprocessor, prior to C89, C was a mess portability-wise. (Actually, even after C89, portability was still frustrated by the problem of the varying size of ints.) Ritchie designed C to get above the assembly level so that portability would be possible. But it was certainly not attained until much later.

Re: HaXe - Code Once. Deploy Everywhere.

#52

Post by tluyben2 »

rabidsnail wrote: post #31
tluyben2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. I have worked with haxe quite a bit and I haven't seen this; after a while you create enough libs for yourself to avoid this. Or maybe i'm missing the point here; what kind of host-specific features are you talking about? Maybe you are creating totally different software from what I am making :)

Networking, drawing to the screen, video and audio, click events, etc. I think that's most of what most apps are doing. If you're doing something numeric (like a simulation or a computer algebra system) my previous statement doesn't apply.

But these things are encapsulated; if you work with haxe a lot, you'll have libs which, besides maybe a config setting per platform, are code compatible...

Re: HaXe - Code Once. Deploy Everywhere.

#53

Post by chipsy »

bcrescimanno wrote: post #6

Ah, "code once. deploy everywhere." Few examples of marketing to engineers spark quite the same level of skepticism as this oft-repeated claim. Ignoring, for a moment, the complexity of deploying software across multiple platforms, it's important to remember the multiple form-factor problem. The same software doesn't work from a user's standpoint on multiple platforms if the UI isn't correct for that device. The best…

Keep in mind that you have created a strawman by extending the requirements of "deploy everywhere" to be UI-focused, when one-size-fits-all UI is not listed as a selling point.

In the case of HaXe, its focus has emerged from Web games with server-side needs, where UI is primarily a concern on only one platform, or shared between two platforms(Flash and JS/HTML).

Although there are now several haXe libraries that are willing to suffer the "slings and arrows" necessary to provide a flexible API experience, the core language is very realistic about what it is going to provide across all platforms - a limited set of data, logic, and networking compatibility. In all other respects the language is very, very concerned with being able to drill down to the native features of each platform and achieve as native an experience as possible given the constraints of a garbage-collecting, dynamic/static mixed, classy OO language design.

Re: HaXe - Code Once. Deploy Everywhere.

#54

Post by dirtyaura »

GavinB wrote: post #33
bcrescimanno wrote: post #6

Ah, "code once. deploy everywhere." Few examples of marketing to engineers spark quite the same level of skepticism as this oft-repeated claim. Ignoring, for a moment, the complexity of deploying software across multiple platforms, it's important to remember the multiple form-factor problem. The same software doesn't work from a user's standpoint on multiple platforms if the UI isn't correct for that device. The best…

http://unity3d.com/ Yes, you have to make allowances for the actual differences between platforms (physical buttons, screen sizes, input methods), but the rest of the code deploys extremely well across platforms. When moving between platforms, you only have to rewrite the pieces that you actually want to be different.

Unity is great for a restricted problem space: applications that almost fully define their own GUI, namely games.

A truly harder cross-platform problem is to abstract access to OS GUI in usable way.

Re: HaXe - Code Once. Deploy Everywhere.

#55

Post by aritraghosh007 »

Another programming language which claims to improve productivity by reducing multi-platform portability. Java starter this revolution , by quoting "Write Once , Run Anywhere". That phrase has seriously taken a huge leap today and has been used in all sorts of context.

If I start learning this language , I am not sure if I am actually getting the full benefit of what a Java/Python provides. I am not convinced until I actually see a production ready solution.

Re: HaXe - Code Once. Deploy Everywhere.

#56

Post by jxcole »

Having been writing in Haxe for a long time, I think the "Code once deploy everwhere" line is an exaggeration. However, it is a nice framework and has some advantages. In Haxe, you can easily break out into the native language with c-like # compiler directives, so you can do #if platform=ipod. Now, this isn't a perfect solution but it does mean that you can keep a good portion of your code the same source which could save you some time. For certain elements like the UI, though, you probably have to write a custom version for each platform no matter what programming language you use.

Re: HaXe - Code Once. Deploy Everywhere.

#58

Post by willvarfar »

azakai wrote: post #12

> Unlike JavaScript which can take hours to debug, haXe has a very strict compile-time type checking feature that allows you to catch errors before testing your program in the browser It's great that you invented a new programming language. haXe is very cool. But why do you feel the need to disparage other programming languages? If you personally don't like dynamic typing, that's fine. But putting that in the blurb f…

Haxe is not new. I was using it years ago.

It started out as an actionscript (which is javascript) compiler for flash that was simply enerated far faster swf files than the macromedia toolchain.

From this grew an actionscript like language called haxe that strives to solve what were seen as the wrongs of the javascript language. And in my opinion it succeeds.

Its cool to see that the cross platform angle grows and i hope haxe reaches the mainstream awareness it deserves.

You should try it :)

Re: HaXe - Code Once. Deploy Everywhere.

#59

Post by lexoyo »

EmmanuelOga wrote: post #32
DasIch wrote: post #7

If they would have something that is worth being called documentation I might have actually taken this seriously.

Like the gigantic wiki? http://haxe.org/doc Or the API docs? http://haxe.org/api Or maybe you rather reading a book? http://www.amazon.com/Professional-haXe-Neko-Programmer/dp/0... http://www.amazon.com/haXe-Beginners-Guide-Benjamin-Dasnois/...

But the libraries are what makes haXe so powerful, and they clearly do lack documentation...

Re: HaXe - Code Once. Deploy Everywhere.

#60

Post by lexoyo »

bcrescimanno wrote: post #6

Ah, "code once. deploy everywhere." Few examples of marketing to engineers spark quite the same level of skepticism as this oft-repeated claim. Ignoring, for a moment, the complexity of deploying software across multiple platforms, it's important to remember the multiple form-factor problem. The same software doesn't work from a user's standpoint on multiple platforms if the UI isn't correct for that device. The best…

I completely agree.

I use haXe on a daily basis, for cross-platform application development and for me: => 1 platform (soft or hard) = 1 app.

But haXe makes it possible to keep the application logic, and not to start from scratch every time.

And I publish for a lot of platforms, in web and native forms: mobiles, smart TVs, tablets, html5 websites with a Flash version used as a fallback in case one do not have a recent browser, points of sell / touch screens. And some haxers target the game consoles.

So it is really impressive, even if the slogan is clearly not true nor relevant - haXe community has always have problems with communication (last time I talked about it with one of the founders, he answered "what communication problems? it is the most efficient way to communicate", and I finally understood that he was talking about client-server communication :D no comment!

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