The geekiest form of excitement
On one rare but very appreciated tea-break, whilst sipping the hot elixir, I was idly searching for an OSS SWF-file generator. I don't know why, because I have Flash already; I suppose I was curious to see if those cheeky open-source monkeys had got 'round to it. Anyway, I happened upon MTASC, which is almost exactly that: it's an open-source ActionScript compiler. According to its blurb it's very good, which I'm pleased to hear. I may give it a try in future. But that is not the main reason for this post. Oh no. From that site, there is a link to something much more interesting.
It's called haXe. It's a language. But the interesting thing about it is that it's cross-platform. Not in the Java sense: it compiles to Flash, JavaScript, Neko (server-side language currently available for Apache) and desktop executables. Syntactically, it's “between Java and ECMA”, so it shouldn't require a massive re-train.
I'm excited by this. It's a new, fresh-for-2006 language that at least on the face of it could be hugely useful. Imagine building a web app where you can use the same language for the server-side processing, the front-end (AJAX or whatever), and any Flash elements. Then imagine you could easily port it to the desktop using the same language.
So, the enthusiasm is there. Now I've just got to find the time.
Bugger.
Labels: Tools
Jason posted this on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 at 10:01 am. Leave comment.
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