[osflash] haXe Physics Engine

[Mark Winterhalder]

On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 11:58 PM, Dave Mennenoh
<dave at blurredistinction.com> wrote:
> >>Though I'm a little confused about haXe, what is it's purpose?
>
>  I'm in the same boat... I've seen haxe mentioned here and there, but never
>  looked at it. I don't know any developers who have used it either, so I just
>  don't quite get it. So, haxe has it's own dev environment? Do people who use
>  haxe not use Flash? I'd really need to be convinced to spend any time
>  learning it... it took me long enough to get decent at AS.


Apart from the standard haXe argument (can compile for flash6-8,
flash9, the Neko Vm and generate Javascript), it compiles faster code
than the AS3 compiler and features a great type system. Have a look at
<http://haxe.org/ref#class_parameters>, for example (there's more,
like Enums and Typedefs). For the average AS coder those features may
seem a bit strange at first, but they turn out to be very helpful when
you got used to them.
All that typing may seem as if it was a bit much to type (on your
keyboard), but quite the opposite is true. The haXe compiler allows
you to imply types. So, if you have a method 'foo' that returns an
integer, var bar = a.foo() will type bar as an integer.

Learning haXe is quite easy if you're coming from AS. For..in loops
behave differently, but there aren't many other differences, even the
API is the same (AS3 API when you compile for flash9). haXe's
additional features are there if you want them, but you could simply
do things the way you would with AS at first, with only minimal
adjustments.

"Come for performance, stay for the type system."

Mark