> Haxe is an open source toolkit based on a modern, high level, strictly typed programming language, a cross-compiler, a complete cross-platform standard library and ways to access each platform's native capabilities.

>What the fuck am I reading?

A pretty accurate description of what Haxe is, with bog-standard programming terms and no buzzwords.

>I have no idea how anyone could think this is a reasonable way to describe something.

Probably because they have a better grasp of what the thing they are describing is.

>Why not just say it’s a modern, high level, strictly typed programming language?

Because then you would have left out the most important parts: that it's also a cross-compiler, with a cross-platform standard library, and access to the underlying native libraries.

Again, all these are bog-standard programming terms, and all are things that Haxe offers. Furthermore, they are all core to its core mission, and the main reasons why one might choose it over any other "high level, strictly typed, programming language".

Even more so, what the fuck is difficult to parse about Haxe also being "a cross compiler"? It just means it can produce code for different platforms/environments.

Or about having a "complete cross-platform standard library"? It just means that it has a large standard library, that is portable across many platforms/environments.

Or what is difficult about it having "ways to access each platform's native capabilities"? It just means that it's not some closed sandbox system, but you can link and call into platform (e.g. iOS or .NET or whatever) APIs.

Haxe is basically several different things.

A language: It's language was originally designed to be a successor to ActionScript 3, as Haxe was originally designed to replace Flash.

A cross-compiler: The most interesting part in my opinion. Basically you can write Haxe code and target many, many different platforms. Mostly how this works is by transpiling, or translating the code into valid code in other languages.

A cross-platform standard library: This just means that it includes its standard library whenever it cross-compiles.

Ways to access native capabilities: Depending on your desired compilation target, you can use specific functionality only available on that target.

I've used it before as a demo building something to run on flash based set-top boxes. Hey couldn't process XML quickly so I moved the code that did it to run on a server and use the built in serialise/deserialise functions. Then I just compiled one side to flash and one side to PHP.

You are reading an information dense sentence describing a large, complex ecosystem.

That sounds like the start state of an adventure-style game.

Cool but I’ve never heard of a programming language that doesn’t come with a compiler or standard library does that really need to be spelled out?

But see, cross-compilers and cross-platform standard libraries are actually different things than compilers and standard libraries. In the context of cross-platform mobile, they are quite important things to spell out.

It's not easy to describe... Hate is basically like ActionScript. The compiler is written in Haskell (or was it OCaml?) and it compiles to: JavaScript, Flash (SWF), C++, Python, PHP and who knows what else, for multiple platforms. You can do both server-side code and client-side code. It's quite impressive, it also can run on top of the MakoVM. I kinda laughed at your response about it though it does sound a bit much for someone not familiar with Haxe.

The Haxe compiler is written in OCaml

https://haxe.org/documentation/introduction/building-haxe.ht...

I originally wrote it the other way "(or was it Haskell?)" but switched it out since I've seen so many Haskell languages here. But yeah that sounds right. I remember looking into why a compiler / transpiler in OCaml would work and apparently they have really great string libraries. I'm no expert in OCaml nor Haskell just know both are used to make some interesting projects. I am always fascinated by Haxe.

Anyone interested can read this paper - https://www.ijicta.org/index.php/ijicta/article/view/16 .

> Why not just say it’s a modern, high level, strictly typed programming language?

Because Haxe is more than that... Why would you favor less specific, less informative description over a factually correct statement?

It makes total sense to me, but it helps that I've spent hundreds of hours researching and using cross-platform frameworks.

It might be that you aren't the target audience.