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[DecapitatedOrk]

So I've been mostly working with JAVA, JS, and AS3 all my life and I've heard mentions of Haxe before, but I've never bothered checking it out until now. Looking over its documentation, the thing looks AHMAZING! So with the obvious exception of "I prefer frame X/Y which hasn't been ported to Haxe." What reason should I have to not use Haxe? Does it have performance issues?

[Gregg Williams]

Lack of support is the issue usually cited.

[NoobsArePeople2]

I looked at Haxe NME awhile back and agree that it does look amazing. The stumbling block for me is that the documentation is a little sparse beyond the basic "hello world"-type stuff. Community resources can be great but they only get you so far.

Speaking of community resources, Game from Scratch has a quick overview of Haxe and a Haxe Tutorial Series that is recent and gives a balance take on the state of Haxe.

[Richard Kain]

A big reason for lack of adoption of HAXE has been the efforts that Adobe has put into AIR. A few years back, HAXE was one of the best ways of getting flash-style coding projects onto iOS. But the continued development and adaptation of AIR has made native flash projects much more viable for iOS development.

I actually did a little HAXE development, (along with NME) and I had a pretty good time doing it. Lack of documentation and a much smaller community of developers is one of the bigger drawbacks to using it. The issue with performance is that it varies across different platforms, and you need to do a significant amount of testing.

I stopped using HAXE because of the promotion Unity had where they gave away their mobile licenses for free. (for a limited time) Now I have bargain-basement prices on Unity for their mobile platforms, and have been focused on Unity development. (I already knew C#)

[Moczan]

I did some development in HAXE but there are some major problems with it compared to more commercial products like AIR or Unity. The real problem is lack of support, poor documentation, inconsistency between platforms (this is where AIR and Unity really shine). I was also lured by the "code in as3-like language with gpu support and native builds" but:
a) AIR with Stage3D also has that, it has way better support with thousands of engine and people all over the world using it and you can get it on mobile so it's a win-win (this also applies to Unity)
b) HAXE is bunch of guys, while AIR/Unity is a corporation. I still remember a situation where major, stable haxeNME build, not the one pulled from repository but the one published on site etc. broke the whole rendering on Windows. And what's more, they didn't fix it like in 2-3 months despite it being reported because 'I don't have Windows machine near me atm, you can fork it and maintain a Windows-working version yourself cause we don't care'. Imagine that with Unity or Adobe.

So yeah, it's a nice tool but I wouldn't consider it for any serious development, especially since there are better alternatives.

[GroZZleR]

- It's pronounced "hex" but spelled "haxe".  Something fishy about that.

- All the data types are Pascal case but all other keywords are lowercase.  What up with that?

 

[Jubjub]

AIR doesn't run on my phone, yet a Haxe NME application runs just fine, so even though this is purely anectodal evidence, you might want to consider the compatibility of Haxe as a plus.

I don't really like Haxe as a language due to the lack of implicit casting and the terribly slow compilation process for any target.

I'm writing my current project in AS3 while keeping in mind I'll have to translate it later if I want to run it on my phone, probably with the help of a Python script or something.

[ericmbernier]

There was a topic similar to this one over on /r/haxe not too long ago.
http://www.reddit.com/r/haxe/comments/1dddp5/is_haxe_worth_learning/.

Also, the NME forums have quite a few discussions debating AIR vs. NME.
http://www.nme.io/community/forums/programming-with-haxe/nme-good-alternative-adobe-air/
http://www.nme.io/community/forums/general-discussion/nme-vs-adobe-air/

Hopefully some of these other posts can help your decision on whether or not Haxe is worth your time or not. I know I'll be giving it a try once my current game is finished, simply because I'm curious. However, @Moczan raises some very great points against it, in favor of a more supported product.

[Solace]

The problem with most "do everything magically" tools (I haven't used HAXE but in general) are the edge cases, they are great when you do the test excercises or build a simple app, but then problems often crop up 6 months into development when it just won't do feature x, y or z that you really need it to do.

I've found the best way to analyse a new language / tool / thing is ignore those who have given it a quick skim or only done the tutorials and instead ask those who've been developing with it for 6+ months. They'll be able to tell you all it's strengths, weaknesses and flaws.