Name: Anonymous 2008-02-11 22:24
haXe is a language I've used for about half a year now.
haXe has dynamic types with optional static type inference, which lets you decide on an individual line-of-code basis which you want to use.
haXe gives sane, human-comprehensible compile-time error messages in large part as a result of the type system. (It is written in OCaml)
haXe has built-in functional programming constructs and reflectivity. I wish real metaprogramming were possible, but it's a compiler, it can only do so much.
haXe isn't tied to any particular VM, it compiles to Javascript source, Flash bytecode, and nekoVM bytecode. With nekoVM it is possible to interface to C.
haXe looks like Javascript, making it friendly and inviting for a Blub programmer.
All of the above taken together makes haXe a reasonable general-purpose language. I think it is potentially better "glue" than currently hyped favorites like Python and Ruby, though the available libraries are much smaller.
My only real criticism of haXe is that the syntax forces some OO cruft on the programmer. One must write everything within a class, which adds some friction to <100 line projects. For those projects where the extra type-time is actually a burden, I still grab Python.
haXe has dynamic types with optional static type inference, which lets you decide on an individual line-of-code basis which you want to use.
haXe gives sane, human-comprehensible compile-time error messages in large part as a result of the type system. (It is written in OCaml)
haXe has built-in functional programming constructs and reflectivity. I wish real metaprogramming were possible, but it's a compiler, it can only do so much.
haXe isn't tied to any particular VM, it compiles to Javascript source, Flash bytecode, and nekoVM bytecode. With nekoVM it is possible to interface to C.
haXe looks like Javascript, making it friendly and inviting for a Blub programmer.
All of the above taken together makes haXe a reasonable general-purpose language. I think it is potentially better "glue" than currently hyped favorites like Python and Ruby, though the available libraries are much smaller.
My only real criticism of haXe is that the syntax forces some OO cruft on the programmer. One must write everything within a class, which adds some friction to <100 line projects. For those projects where the extra type-time is actually a burden, I still grab Python.