Not sure whether to use haXe of just plain flash

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Not sure whether to use haXe of just plain flash

Hi Guys,

A local sports clothing company has hired me to make them a flash based jersey colour picker sort of thing. They are wanting it so users can check out what particular designs would look like with certain colours.

Now, I'm by no means a great developer (I'm 16, but I know my way around javascript, flash and a bit of AS2) but I've taken notice of haXe recently and think it might be a good project to write in it and compile to a swf. I'm not sure if I should just use flash, or if I should use haXe.

Is anybody able to iterate on the strengths and weaknesses of using haXe or flash please?

Thanks in advance!

P.S. I do have a copy of flash (supplied by school), so that doesn't concern me.

+1 A:

Given your access to Flash tools, there's not a lot to choose between them.

Haxe is generally held up to be the better language, and it has some neat optimisation tricks (it's better at generating byte-code than Adobe's own tools) as well as 'inline' and memory access. On the other hand, Haxe is best wielded in a code editor and your problem might best be solved graphically.

I would recommend sticking to Flash, to be honest. Why add risk to a small project?

Will 2010-05-17 09:54:38

Thanks Will. Might try haXe a bit later recreationally!

tominated 2010-05-17 10:12:15

how can the problem be solved graphically?

back2dos 2010-05-17 10:34:23

@back2dos I meant using a nice RAD tool for layout and UI

Will 2010-05-17 11:11:13

I don't agree on the "add risk to a small project" thing ... what risks are you referring? Personally I don't see any. If you plan to make an "almost static banner", the flash IDE is invaluable (and to draw any kind of graphical asset of course). But if you already have asset and/or your graphic is programmatically generated I don't see any disadvantage using haXe, on the contrary I see many advantages.

Franco Ponticelli 2010-05-17 11:53:53

@Franco Ponticelli: Well, will would actually have a good point, if the OP had flash experience and a workflow. In that case it would be safer to stick with what works just fine, instead of plungeing into a new language, dealing with all of its new/slightly different concepts, while the project is actually so small in size and features that you don't have to worry about code quality or technology.

back2dos 2010-05-17 12:04:26

@Will: Flash is good for prototyping, but that's only a small part in RAD. Flex is good for RAD. ASwing has a reasonable GUI-builder. Both can be used with haXe. And there is haxegui, although I find it performs a little poorly.

back2dos 2010-05-17 12:08:24

I use Haxe, and mostly love it.But is it good advice to a 16yo with a paid project to go learn how to program if they can do it point-and-click with the Flash CS or whatever they have used before?Advice them to learn Haxe, develop themselves and such, in their free time!

Will 2010-05-17 12:33:18

Well, maybe it is not the most pragmatic of advices, but to me personally, it seems better than letting them stick with Flash IDE and **AS2**, which usually implies having your code spread out through the whole timeline in `on(click)`-handlers all over the place. Especially in commercial projects, maintainability is important, since customers don't like to pay for refactoring if they "only want a tiny new feature".

back2dos 2010-05-17 12:42:54

You have a point here about experience. But if tominated knows "just" AS2 he will need anyway to learn AS3 or haXe. Using AS2 nowadays is really more geeky than any other solution ;)

Franco Ponticelli 2010-05-17 12:43:00

When I was 16 I had some small jobs, perhaps not unlike our OP. @tominated: The customer does not look at the code, they look at the results. Do nothing to risk having something running to show them, you might get more work! And in your spare time, use the enthusiasm and initiative that you've shown here to learn Haxe and perhaps other languages like C# or F#. You'll quickly become a competent coder, but that's for *after* your early paid work!

Will 2010-05-17 12:49:11

As much as I like HaXe I probably would also go with Will's solution. The biggest pain with HaXe for me is the lack of debugger and the smaller community. I use HaXe when I can but sometimes Flash is the more efficient choice.

Allan 2010-05-18 04:14:32

+3 A:

I personally suggest you use haXe, due to the lack of alternatives:

Learning AS2 really isn't worth it, because it's quite obsolete.
Learning AS3 isn't really worth it, because AS3 is a rather poor language and has stalled since its release 4 years ago.

haXe is moving fast, and it is open source, leaving you the chance to one day enhance the language as you please. It has a much stronger and more expressive type system and better support for functional style. It is a much richer language, yet very high level. I think for you at your age this is a very good language to look at, because it promotes a lot of concepts and paradigms, while hiding the intricacies of low level programming languages.

using SWCs you can use graphics created with the Flash IDE within haXe projects, to avoid drawing everything with code.

greetz
back2dos

back2dos 2010-05-17 11:46:45

ansaurus

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Not sure whether to use haXe of just plain flash

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