haXe is a programming language, designed for creating interactive web applications. Currently there are three official compiler targets - Adobe Flash, JavaScript and the Neko VM.

History

Development of haXe was started on the 22nd of October, 2005. The first alpha version of haXe was released on the 14th of November, in the same year. The first beta version was released on the 4th of February, 2006. haXe 1.0 was released on the 17th of April, in the same year. The present release of haXe is version 1.17, which was released on the 13th of January, 2008.

haXe is released under the GNU General Public License.

Naming and Pronunciation

The name haXe was chosen because it is short, easy, cool, and "has a X inside", which the author claims is necessary to make any new technology a success.

There is currently no official pronunciation of haXe. However, common pronunciations are "hex" (due to the fact that the author is French), "hacks", "aytch axe".

Language

haXe is similar to ECMAScript, although almost no ECMAScript code will run on haXe without modifications. Unlike ECMAScript, haXe is a compiled language. It supports object-oriented programming, exceptions, and type inference with class parameters. Although haXe is strongly typed, there are ways of bypassing type-checking, which brings it closer to a dynamically typed language. Enumerated types are a key feature of the language, they can have parameters of their own and be recursive, which allows them to be treated like classes.

Here is some example code for the Adobe Flash target (from the haXe website):class Test { static function main { var mc : flash.MovieClip = flash.Lib.current; mc.beginFill(0xFF0000); mc.moveTo(50,50); mc.lineTo(100,50); mc.lineTo(100,100); mc.lineTo(50,100); mc.endFill(); } }

This will draw a square using a Flash MovieClip object.