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I've seen Haxe around for years now, even toyed with it for a bit eons ago. I see it's now branded as for cross-platform development. I'm reading use-cases on t

I've seen Haxe around for years now, even toyed with it for a bit eons ago. I see it's now branded as for cross-platform development. I'm reading use-cases on their site. So, I have a question. Is it possible to utilise it for writing an app that works both on mobile and desktop, not just cross-mobile or cross-desktop-os?

nudpiedo 9y ago
It is a toolkit to generate code not a framework, that means yes and no at the same time: - no, it won't abstract the semantic differences across platforms differences for you. - yes, since you can create complete libraries which can be trivially ported to each system (also the standard library is cross platform). - yes, haxe language has some frameworks which aim to achieve that - but no haxe framework is mature enough to just code and run everywhere cleanly abstracting all API's and UI's as most of developers would expect nowadays So, you still will need to appropriately architecture your application and know how your target platforms works and abstracts everything.
- really-dinosaur 9y ago
  The easiest way to explain Haxe, is it compiles C#/Java-like code into platform specific code, usually javascript nowadays. The Haxe syntax itself, is quite peculiar. You can get proper classes, properties, constructors (which are always forced... sigh), and there is the possibility of macros, which lets you do C# style annotations on classes. The problem is, most of the time, you have to do a bit of special work to get Haxe to play nice with your modern front-end frameworks. Also, HaxeDevelop hasn't really picked up on the trend towards simpler, pleasant to use IDEs. There is a lot of good functionality in there, but you should be able to get Haxe code working with VS Code. So what could HaxeDevelop do better? I think it looks too similar to VS2010, whilst everybody else is having a mad dance party over in Metro land. The distraction free IDEs nowadays, really make it easier to get in the zone, and you can configure snippets super easy nowadays. Offer some really good themes out of the box. I shouldn't have to go into the settings to make my code look nice. But an actually honest to god redesign I would love. As long as they don't do what is so common right now and use redesigns to cover up for technical debt. And make sure your users never have to worry about DPI. Electron apps are like so hot right now...

nudpiedo 9y ago

It is a toolkit to generate code not a framework, that means yes and no at the same time: - no, it won't abstract the semantic differences across platforms differences for you. - yes, since you can create complete libraries which can be trivially ported to each system (also the standard library is cross platform). - yes, haxe language has some frameworks which aim to achieve that - but no haxe framework is mature enough to just code and run everywhere cleanly abstracting all API's and UI's as most of developers would expect nowadays So, you still will need to appropriately architecture your application and know how your target platforms works and abstracts everything.

really-dinosaur 9y ago
The easiest way to explain Haxe, is it compiles C#/Java-like code into platform specific code, usually javascript nowadays. The Haxe syntax itself, is quite peculiar. You can get proper classes, properties, constructors (which are always forced... sigh), and there is the possibility of macros, which lets you do C# style annotations on classes. The problem is, most of the time, you have to do a bit of special work to get Haxe to play nice with your modern front-end frameworks. Also, HaxeDevelop hasn't really picked up on the trend towards simpler, pleasant to use IDEs. There is a lot of good functionality in there, but you should be able to get Haxe code working with VS Code. So what could HaxeDevelop do better? I think it looks too similar to VS2010, whilst everybody else is having a mad dance party over in Metro land. The distraction free IDEs nowadays, really make it easier to get in the zone, and you can configure snippets super easy nowadays. Offer some really good themes out of the box. I shouldn't have to go into the settings to make my code look nice. But an actually honest to god redesign I would love. As long as they don't do what is so common right now and use redesigns to cover up for technical debt. And make sure your users never have to worry about DPI. Electron apps are like so hot right now...