The Haxe Paradox: What Can We Do to Make Haxe Less 'Boring'?

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I need to start this post by saying I am not joking. I am a huge supporter of Haxe, and I genuinely believe we should maintain a collection of methods to combat the sense of “boringness” that can sometimes accompany the language.

The Undeniable Power of Haxe

I won’t spend long discussing the numerous benefits of Haxe—the extensive collection of metaprogramming tools, compile-time code generation, functional capabilities, seamless cross-platform targeting, automatic type infusion, and fast compilation. These features save countless lines of code and many hours of debugging, blowing away many mainstream languages in terms of efficiency and correctness.

However, this very efficiency has a side effect. It can be… well, boring.

Many programmers thrive on challenge. They might miss the “fun” of tracking down obscure type-related issues, the thrill of finally squashing a null reference exception, or the stimulating iterative illusion that “just one more compile, and I go for lunch.” In Haxe, by contrast, you work calmly to satisfy the Haxe compiler. Once you are done, the code is typically working, giving you the confidence to make quick changes without fear.

I’m not making fun of a good product—I see this effect firsthand with my coworkers. There is a sense of low-key depressiveness after a day of “boring Haxe,” as opposed to the elation that follows a whole day wasted tracking down a missed variable assignment in a main stream language.

For many, the lack of a comparable parallel project written in another language means they can’t feel that genuine happiness about having less boilerplate code or more constrained logic. There are similar claims online about languages like Golang, which prioritizes simplicity and consistency. Go is Boring...And That’s Fantastic! | Capital One , Haxe is more flexible but a smart user can get greater consitency that in pure go. see my GitHub - neimanpinchas/reflaxe_go: Compiler from haxe to go using reflaxe

I still prefer organized Haxe for reasons of long-term maintainability—I’d take Haxe code written by three different developers any day over a mess of JS code written by a combination of one dev and an AI, where no one truly knows what’s going on (or drop the AI, kind of tradeoff).

I would like to know if anyone else has had a similar experience, and more importantly, what methods we can employ to keep Haxe coders happy and engaged while maximizing the incredible benefits the language offers.

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I guess we can do better with trading in part the time saved with giving programmers a chance to reduce code by macros, or working on extreme runtime optimization.

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This seems like a marketing problem, the challenge being how we can clearly communicate the advantages of Haxe to our target markets. I wonder about expanding the Who Uses Haxe page to include more testimonials, along with various case studies for people wanting to deep dive into more information. Then we could put that in a more prominent position on the Haxe home page. Perhaps putting out a “call for entries” to the Haxe community soliciting their personal stories would be the way to start?

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I come from the Flash world and have worked with ActionScript.
In my experience, interest in programming largely depends on the types of projects you work on. What inspired me in the Flash era were the many creative and experimental projects coming from both the community and Adobe - especially the things released through labs.adobe.com. There was always something new and surprising: P2P experiments, multiplayer ideas, the concept of ActionScript 4, and many other innovations. The large developer community constantly pushed things forward.

With Haxe, similar innovation does happen, but less often. There are great developments like HashLink, Haxe 5, and the ideas from Haxe Evolution, but naturally the pace is slower because fewer people use the language.

In my view, for Haxe to feel more exciting, it needs more users, more conferences, more evangelists, and more people actively presenting and promoting it. Still, the language is already at a strong and mature level for those who use it regularly. There was even an attempt at marketing in the past, but the person hired for that role left after a few months.

So Haxe naturally goes where the leadership directs it - in our case, mostly support, bug fixes, and slowly adding new features (which are not a priority).

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I can’t agree with you when we have such issues Cross-Platform Socket Behavior Inconsistencies · Issue #1264 · HaxeFoundation/hxcpp · GitHub in the basic std functionality of the language in 2025.

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What Can We Do to Make Haxe Less ‘Boring’?

Built-in, simple to use hot reload functionality (at least for one target) would go a long way towards reducing iteration times, and IMO make Haxe projects less ‘boring’ to develop.

An Actor framework using enums for message passing would be cool as well.

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While certain sources of frustration are Undeniable—including some bugs in the C# TCP client and various sys related hiccups—I typically resolve these issues by utilizing externs, abstracts, compile-time macros, and robust target-language libraries.

The excellent type safety and type inference provide me with the second half of the confidence I need in my code across the many targets I support.

I maintain Haxe/JS code that I run on environments such as Node, Bun, Deno, FreeSWITCH mod_v8, and client-side browsers. The same underlying calls are compiled into different host calls depending on the specific target runtime.

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That’s an interesting insight on how to approach the problem by giving immediate feedback. I had been telling myself that, from a technical standpoint, immediate feedback is less critical in Haxe due to its type safety. However, the psychological difference is significant; working ‘in the dark’ can be depressing.

There are attempts at implementing this that I’ve never taken the time to try out.

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I don’t disagree with you. From a correctness perspective, yes, strong type safety probably helps more than hot reloading to get your program to work correctly.

However, often when writing multimedia programs (like games), a lot of the tweaking developers do aren’t related to correctness. They are instead trying different approaches to see which one looks/feels better for their program. Example: if you’re programming an enemy for your game, you may want to tweak values like their health points, animation speed, how often they spawn, etc. and see your changes in real time, without having to close the game, recompile, and run it again.

Below is an example from GMLive (a hot reload solution for GML, developed with Haxe). The example shows the user editing the code on the left, and seeing the results immediately on the right.

hot-reload-example

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I honestly do not understand the whole “language is boring“ argument. For serverside work I use “Go”, another language that is accused to be “boring”. I find the whole thing weird.

You don’t use a language because it’s exciting. You use it because it helps you build exciting things without getting in the way. The excitement comes from what you are building, not from the language itself.

If you find yourself thinking the language is boring, it;s most likely the projects you’re building that are to blame

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Well, maybe you could experiment with AI and ask it to write haxe code for you ? It’s just an idea, I haven’t even remotely tried anything at all in that direction, but that’s probably the third time I gave it a thought over the past couple of weeks “what if I asked an AI to write a 3D physics engine for haxe ?” but then I always end up having something else to do.

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i feel same pain that not much likes to using pure haxe
M A T H
formulas;)

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Two thoughts from a long term haxe user and fan

  • Take a leaf from three.js’ marketing book: advertise the amazing things made with haxe front and center on the home page and in social accounts (daily). It signals, smart people who know what they’re doing are using this language. Nothing is better at getting curiosity from potential users

For example, saharan is one of the most impressive web creatives on the planet. Take a look in the console logs of their demos, all haxe :wink: Life Universe
We should reach out!

  • Treat the JS ecosystem with greater priority: this one is the big one for me and why I haven’t used haxe in some time. The JS ecosystem, from VMs to community libraries is incredible and has the weight billions in investment from tech giants. It’s got rough edges but the speed, portability and flexibility of JS is unparalleled – the vast majority of my professional work is here

Haxe as a better TypeScript is a real opportunity; the complexity bloat there is a real pain point. But we need serious and seamless npm integration and prioritisation of the js target

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When I’m bored, I try out a different pork knuckle haxe-recipe or attempt to create a completely new one.
Haxiomic: We should also not forget Python’s language capabilities, because it seems to me that it is becoming more and more established there (after Perl *lol;:).
For me the `js` target (runs like light \o/) personally more is for showcase and to → send something viral.
(^_^)
[PS: today i made “mini-wrapper” around openAL and webAudio ready:

thanks to haxe-spice into abstracts *hugs]

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neimanpinchas Neiman what was the last time your really had a good feeling by using haxe ? (over long of hours if you are deep into a little haxeMAREton ? [what makes you BORING while INSIDE]
(pls where is your code what makes you boeooRinG;:): ?

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Its in the very nature of the programmer.

Why would anyone choose such an exhaustive job as programming? It’s much better to sit in a booth, listen to the radio, and control a turnpike (and perhaps map/reduce the cars by color and make…). The answer is: Boredom.

  • Programmers Don’t Like to Be Bored: Tracking down a null reference exception is the very opposite of boring—it’s an intense, intellectually challenging exercise in problem-solving.

  • The Sane Choice: While smart people choose Haxe for very sane and robust reasons, the “boring” issue surfaces because it is often too stable and well-designed. Real-world projects can turn into long iterations where the practical contribution is measured, and components “just work,” reducing the thrilling need for “firefighting.”

  • Creating the Excitement: We seek that small thrill, that constant development challenge. Therefore, to counter this perception of boredom, we must create excitement—whether by writing more complex macros, leveraging advanced language features, or finding other creative solutions within the project.

Personally, I am very grateful, and even happy when I am implementing something in Haxe. It is a fantastic language. Still, the long iterations per actual project contribution sometimes bring some sadness because the excitement factor can feel diminished.

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if you feel booring you should dive deeper into the common unsolved algorithm problems~~
→ allways is a W A Y (^_^)
your post here neimanpinchas also inspirated ME to create a new haxelib today . ..
(i am called it “viktor” *lol)
→ i mean → do no let you get BOOOOORRRRinGotLET←not get IT^^

(haxelib.json and hxp also ready into new testing e n v i R ON ment

→ lets SEE ;:slight_smile:
( this “datatype” i am wanna have into → haxelib ← because needed it so often all the years at now;:slight_smile:
https://github.com/maitag/catpi55/blob/master/src/automat/BaseActorList.hx ]^”"^~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVhsi6SFKl8
(boring only if had to code ALONE-_-)