--Original Message----- > From: Tink [mailto:f...@tink.ws ] > Sent: 12 January 2012 19:12 > > This could be a crazy idea, but how about us moving to Haxe? > This has an active OS community, compiles to multiple platforms already meaning > that Flex wouldn't be dependent on Adobe anymore.
I looked into this before Christmas; I even spent time trying to improve existing AS3 -> haXe tools so that they could "compile" the existing Flex source. I did so as haXe already has support for compiling to JavaScript, in many ways it's a better language and it's compiler is fast. However my conclusions were that it would be a bad idea overall. The advantages that haXe could bring us (better language; faster compilation) are now things we can add to the Falcon compiler when we get our hands on it. I think it would look odd to the wider community if we walked away from our own compiler (and Flex's current language) to adopt a relatively unknown language. Further, haXe doesn't support custom namespaces, private or internal (its private keyword is the equivalent of AS3's protected.) It doesn't support E4X notation. It doesn't have a base Object type. It has block scope on variables when AS3 doesn't. It has the weirdest way of doing getters & setters that I've ever seen (some folk love them; I personally hate them.) Last, but by no means least, haXe doesn't have a mxml equivalent. Converting the Flex source to haXe would not be a trivial task. I think the idea was worth exploring as it's not as crazy an idea as some might think. However, having looked into it, I decided it wasn't really as attractive an idea as I'd hoped. David.
