Actionscript 3 vs Haxe: Which to chose for new Flash project?
I am in the planning stages of a new Flash game project and was wondering which language would be better to use? I already have a strong understanding of Actionscript 3, and have not worked with Haxe yet, but I have read the language reference docs and it seems that Haxe has some of the features from my other favorite languages, C# and Ruby.
So my question has two parts:
1) Can Haxe interop with flash components (swc files)? Like for instance if i use the Flash IDE to skin some controls, can i import those controls and use them in Haxe?
2) Are there any performance benefits to the Haxe compiler? or any gotchas?
Answer
1) Yes, and no. As of 2.03 Haxe can export SWCs. This means you can write your code in Haxe , compile to a SWC and then utilize that SWC with Flash. Right now Haxe does not support SWC input, only output (though I believe they are working on this).
2) Yes, there are benefits to using Haxe - unlike Adobe's compilers Haxe actually does some optimizations during compilation (this has been a major bone of contention in the community for a while). In addition, Haxe utilizes some "hidden" new bytecodes that came into being with Flash Player 10 that currently neither Flash or Flex utilize - only Adobe's Alchemy (which cross-compiles from C/C++ source into SWCs).
The only "gotcha" that I know of is that it's kind of bizzaro ActionScript - things are just enough different that it will trip you up a fair amount. That being said, with features like generics and faster code that's small price to pay!