Hey robin7 . Keep in mind that there are other IDEs out there. I currently use IntelliJ with Haxe Toolkit support and I’m quite happy with how things are going. I also have multiple projects and am quite fond of powerfull, full-fledged IDEs.
However, VS Code is growing very fast. It actually has some of the things you want, albeit perhaps not in such a finished form as the full-fledged VS. Did you give it a try? I know some dev rock stars who are all using VS Code, two of which I personally know and consider very mature professionals.
I think the extension ecosystem behind VS Code is possibly just as rich as VS. Regarding multi-project solutions for large projects, are you sure you already need that? You know, large projects aren’t what they used to be . Small and API-driven has been increasingly successful for a very good reason. I tend to prefer multiple IDE windows, where projects are compiled independently thus reducing compile time and forcing me to have an API-driven micro-architecture.
Speaking of compile time, did you know Haxe has a compilation server that can partially-compile code?
VS Code has been advancing at what I would call a very fast pace, also due to the huge community behind it. Keep in mind that it’s OSS and people will gradually add to it. It has taken more than 2 decades for VS to get where it is today, now imagine that VS Code is roughly 3 years old.
You seem to be in the early stages of a project, am I correct? In this situation, one of Haxe’s greatest powers lies in allowing you to ship an early prototype to more platforms and get exposure. I’m in the early stages of a production as well. For me, the greatest value is in focusing ON THE WORK, rather than what IDE or language this thing I’m building will be related to in the end.
Language/IDE are less relevant than getting some early feelings from a prototype. Haxe will get you there pretty fast if you know how to focus on its strengths. Care less about the stuff that is not yet perfect. If your projects rocks, you can build into Haxe whatever you want . Just consider that people wrote new targets for Haxe just because they love what this language can do so much . And if you at one point think that C# is better, just do a one-time conversion to C# at that point and that’s it.
I’ve looked at how Haxe transpiles to C# and it’s fairly clean. There are some things that are done a bit “low level” (such as generic constraints not using “where”, which C# does support) but we ARE talking about a one-time conversion. If anything, such an exercise will simply increase your knowledge of your own project and also, you will probably do it at a point when the project is quite far from release anyway.
That being said, I have “sampled” the Haxe ecosystem and even though it’s far behind some other languages, I have a gut feeling that this baby will skyrocket eventually. There are some really good engineers involved in this and, perhaps more importantly, the culture is good.