[simonbarker87]

I’m always amazed at how many programming languages there are. I’d never heard of Haxe, I don’t think it would have crossed my mind to look for something like it but here it is powering a highly successful game with, from what I can tell, a vibrant eco system around the language as well.

Perhaps I’m not curious enough to go exploring for these languages. I’ve used a few smaller ones in my years (usually because of an external forcing factor - like Squirrel running on ElecticImp devices) but I tend to stick to the big names we all know

[dhosek]

I came of age in an era in which it was often important which version of a language you were programming in. Not all C code could compile with all C compilers (which was part of the motivation behind the C preprocessor), likewise with Pascal, BASIC, FORTRAN, etc. IBM had two different Pascal compilers for VM/CMS named, confusingly, VS/Pascal and Pascal/VS which were almost but not quite identical in functionality and features. On timesharing systems, you might discover all manner of legacy languages lurking on the (dishwasher-sized) hard drives. I checked out a book on SNOBOL from the library to understand what was happening in some SPITBOL code that I found on UIC’s mainframe that was part of the source for a C compiler. Most personal computers came with some version of a Microsoft BASIC in ROM, but there were differences from one platform to the next so you couldn’t necessarily just type in a program written in AppleSoft BASIC and run it in QBASIC under DOS. The fact that in 2022 JVM languages run identically anywhere and that Rust is (almost) platform-agnostic is, to be honest, kind of miraculous.

[tokinonagare]

> I’d never heard of Haxe

Well it was born in France in a web game company (some of their games were pretty famous domestically) as an internal language, and the main selling point at first was the multiple compilation targets (PHP, JS) which included Flash. It wasn't something developed in English in the open at first like a lot of new languages are nowadays, so obviously it took some time to get some international exposure.

[PoignardAzur]

Wait, you mean Motion Twin?

[govg]

Yes, who are famous in large part for Dead Cells. One of the developers even went on to lead Shiro Games, which has done stuff like Dune and Northgard.

[ptato]

but also DinoRPG and My Brute. I played a ton of those when I was younger.

[999900000999]

I really like Haxe.

I want smaller game engines to succeed, but the tooling is just painful to use.

From the time I spent with Haxe, it's very neat language. At the same time, half of why I make games is to learn.

If I have to use your custom language I'm not learning skills to use at work.

For example, with C# you can make games with several languages, you can also work on boring Fintech so you can pay your rent.

With .net core open source I'd love for more engines to use it. Godot 4 with Mono will be a very very strong contender.

[MBCook]

I’ve only ever heard of it in one context. About seven years ago TiVo announced that they were going to start using it to program their devices when they made the new (terrible) interface.

I don’t think I’ve heard about it since then.

[egypturnash]

Haxe is very much a games language, it started out (IIRC) as an ActionScript compiler by a game studio (Motion Twin, now most famous for Dead Cells) who was sick of trying to program in the shitty bare-minimum editor built into Flash, and evolved into its own language that compiled to the Flash plug-in’s VM. Motion Twin released it and its support tools as open source, and a lot of other Flash game devs picked it up.

[MBCook]

Interesting. I don’t do any games development so outside the small amount I know about from watching various AAA games being discussed I’m pretty ignorant.

Thanks for the context.

[boondaburrah]

Haxe is wild to me since I recently started learning it and realised it's basically TypeScript but before TypeScript. Since it's statically typed and can hit C#/Java/C++/JS, I really want to try it in line of business applications as well.