Haxe Introduction

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Haxe (pronounced as hex) is an open source programming language.

While most of the other languages are bound to their own platform (Java to the JVM, C# to .Net, ActionScript to the Flash Player), Haxe is a multiplatform language.

It means that you can use Haxe to target the following platforms :

  • Javascript : You can compile a Haxe program to a single .js file. You can access the typed browser DOM APIs with autocompletion support, and all the dependencies are resolved at compilation time.
  • Flash : You can compile a Haxe program to a .swf file. Haxe can compile for Flash Players 6 to 10, with either "old" Flash<8 API or newest AS3/Flash9+ API. Haxe offers very good performance and language features to develop Flash content.
  • NekoVM : You can compile a Haxe program to NekoVM bytecode. This can be used for server-side programming such as dynamic webpages (using mod_neko for Apache) and also for commandline or desktop applications, since the NekoVM can be embedded and extended with some other DLL.
  • PHP : You can compile a Haxe program to .php files. This enable you to use a high level strictly-typed language such as Haxe while keeping full compatibility with your existing server platform and libraries.
  • C++ : Currently in testing, available on Haxe CVS version, you can now output your Haxe applications to pure C++ source code, complete with makefiles.

The idea behind Haxe is to let the developer choose the best platform to do a given job. In general, this is not easy to do because every new platform comes with its own programming language. What Haxe provides to you is :

  • a standardized language with many good features
  • a standard library (including Date, Xml, Math...) that works the same on all platforms
  • platform-specific libraries : the full APIs for a given platform are accessible from Haxe

Haxe is useful for many different reasons. You might be wondering why use Haxe ?

Want to learn more about Haxe ? Access the documentation.

version #6702, modified 2009-08-05 22:48:01 by michax