Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by register 4158 days ago
The approach is similar to the one chosen by Haxe. I would keep a close eye on the progresses made by this open source language. For the moment the most mature translation target is the C++ one, however there are also targets for Java and C#. Sadly the community seems to be 95% focused on mobile gaming.
1 comments
tluyben2 4158 days ago
Haxe is robust though; it's the libraries that are developed based on the focus of the community. If you want to develop apps with it, you can by just developing a lib. The language & toolchain are robust and with haxescript you can nicely try before you convert.
link
register 4157 days ago
I know it's robust. The fact is that the libraries are most mature just for 2d games, Windows Phone is not supported and the C# and Java backends have less focus from the community. The community is made mostly of old Flash developers so the focus is on OpenFL and NME. These are really the libraries that sparked interest in Haxe.

The typical workflow for such uses is to quickly develop the game on Windows compiling haxe to flash. The haxe to flash compiler is extremely fast, there is debugging support and FlashDevelop rocks. Once done then there is a final transpilation step to the mobile platform of choice. This works and is stable but awkward. Cross compiling to Ios and Android takes a lot of time.

Besides hxscript it would be probably feasible to port Neko to mobile devices and use it as a way to add fast compile-reload cycles. However this not something that a single developer can do and it would be a complete project on its own. The same goes for developing a cross platform application by adding libraries for the functionality needed. Not feasible at all if the final aim is to develop a mobile application.

I really admire Haxe and I really think it's a neat piece of work and that the architect of the language has been able to design it with a wonderful balance of features . I am just sorry that its libraries don't cover the application domain in which I am more interested.

And I am sorry but I don't have time to contribute to the language development. :P

link