The haXe Programming Language

Nicolas Cannasse, the mastermind behind MTASC, has a new project in the works. HaXe is not ready for prime time, but I expect he's going to deliver something impressive. It would be great to be able to write code for old and new flash players alike without having to worry about the transition from AS 2 to AS3. A quick glance at the reference page suggests that the language is already quite a bit like ActionScript.

Key quote for AJAX developers:

Writing small Javascript applications takes time. Mainly because unless you are familiar with DHTML API and Browser differences, you need a lot of tests to make it work correctly. On another point, scaling medium and large Javascript applications is also difficult because of the lack of ways to structure your application (using classes for instance).

haXe ...brings you the whole DHTML API and give you a type system to check that you're using them correctly. Some features of the type system are especialy designed to play nice with the inheritent dynamic typing of DHTML. You can also use classes to structure your program, and easily interact with haXe code running in Flash and on the server side.

The haXe compiler is generating some valid Javascript source code from several haXe classes and files, so you only have to generate one time and then include the .js as usual in your webpage.

Since it doesn't seem like browser manufacturers are ever going to be on the same page, javascript "compilers" like haXe may be the wave of the future.