Speakers

• 

  Nicolas Cannasse

  Director of the Haxe Foundation

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  Nicolas Cannasse

  Director of the Haxe Foundation

  Nicolas is the original creator of Haxe programming language, and director at Haxe Foundation. He is also creating games at Shiro Games using Haxe and the open source Heaps.io framework. His latest game Northgard has been a hit on Steam.

  Sessions held by Nicolas

  • Haxe 4.0

    Nicolas will give an update of the recent Haxe changes, Haxe Foundation activities and talk about things that the team have been working on for Haxe 4.0.

  • Making games with Heaps.io

    Heaps.io is an open source 2D/3D game framework that was used to develop successful commercial games Evoland 1&2, Dead Cells, Northgard and many other smaller non commercial games. Nicolas will introduce the framework, explain how it can be used for Desktop, Mobile, Web and Consoles, what tools are available, answer any question you might have and give a few tips of its own.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  Usually I wake up early with some exciting new thing I want to code.

  • How about Wednesday night?

  I often watch a movie.

  • What was awesome about last year?

  The Haxe Summit ! - And Northgard Early access that was very well received

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  The Haxe Summit ! - And looking forward to reception of my newest games.

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  Making games

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  DRY KISS are two important concepts. "Beautiful code is not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to remove." Syntax is mostly irrelevant and way too much time is spent discussing about it, whereas what is very important is semantic.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  Macros helps a lot creating nicer APIs and carrying developer will into the final code.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  trace("Hello World"); I guess that was actually the first Haxe Project ever :) It took a bit of time to get it working correctly, back in the days.

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  It's not yet announced so I can't tell much about it yet. It's a cool game :)

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  With Haxe you can develop your desktop application, your server, you front and back end, your web and mobiles apps. With one single code base.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  I would have worked on HashLink before.

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  The fact that it's very easy to get started, yet has a nice learning curve to become a better developer.

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  There's a macro for it!

  • Last thoughts:

  See you at Haxe Summit!

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• 

  J Justin Donaldson

  Data Scientist/ML Engineer at Salesforce.com

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  J Justin Donaldson

  Data Scientist/ML Engineer at Salesforce.com

  Justin is an engineer/data scientist at Salesforce. He has been a part of the Haxe community for over 10 years, and uses Haxe on various web/ML projects.

  Sessions held by Justin

  • Golgi : Fast cross platform routing and dispatch

    Golgi is a routing library that is geared for speed and composability. Golgi uses a macro-generated class interface as a route dispatch table.
    Rather than writing complex global route patterns, simply start writing a standard class that extends Golgi, and enjoy extremely fast routing and flexible composition for all your routing needs.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  Falconry

  • How about Wednesday night?

  Exploring the vast reaches of our ocean floor in a homemade submersible

  • What was awesome about last year?

  Secretly saving the world from certain doom

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Picking up knitting

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  Implementing a GUI interface in Visual Basic to track the killer's IP address

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  Always pay attention to the ugliest code you're ever forced to write. You've just run into an opportunity to expand the language.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  Haxe doesn't make too many hard constraints on the underlying runtime, or on how types are defined syntactically. If I run into a problem with conventional typing/syntax, I generally have good options between abstracts and build/init macros.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  A small visualization project that replaced an actionscript codebase.

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  I'm currently working on Golgi, which is a new take on an age-old routing problem.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  A haxe project that compiled js code for backend and frontend, and then js code for running phantom js which emulated a browser running js and loading the site. One build command was able to compile every change, functionally test the code live in our website, and compare a screenshot of the page to a known good result.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  Some parts of the standard libraries are still based off of flash apis from years ago. Time to migrate to something more haxe-ish I think.

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  Our community is great, and I feel we keep the drama to a bare minimum. Gotta hang onto that.

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.

  • Last thoughts:

  As a Seattle native, looking forward to having you guys in my neighborhood!

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• 

  Francis Bourre

  Software Architect at Docler holding

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  Francis Bourre

  Software Architect at Docler holding

  Bourre is software architect and technology manager at Docler holding. He was CTO at periscope-creations.com whose clients include Ubisoft, EA Games, Michelin, Sony, Nintendo, Apple... He worked as senior game developer for Candy Crush licence at king.com, made research and development for building persistent world platform at prizee.com, and contributed to many projects as a freelancer for big names industry. In parallel, he speaked to many conferences , worked on various projects such as game engines and open-source frameworks for application development. Bourre is known for his eclectism (he is also an electro-jazz musician and novelist) and his esthetic code approach. He has written many articles and tutorials about OOP and design patterns.

  Sessions held by Francis

  • Consuming injections with minimal dependencies

    Managing dependencies is a big topic in application engineering. Francis in this talk will showcase some maintanable and performant solutions he's using with haxe.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  I generally wake up around 4am. Time for a long breakfast with fruits and cereals. Black coffee as a moonless night. I need to wake up my brain, to be able to connect my fingers with the piano. Yeah, I write music, and if the weather is not a total disaster, I take time to have a walk with a podcast in my headphones.

  • How about Wednesday night?

  Nothing particular, I just avoid to eat after 12 to keep my Gizmo spirit.

  • What was awesome about last year?

  I freed my mind from 2 years of slavery. Be back to music helped a lot. Ghosts are gone now. Blow with the wind.

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  To meet my best friend in France in her new apartment. The main party will be in my heart.

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  Nothing fancy. It was a program for latin declinations. I didn't have a computer at this time. I did it on the Apple II of my college. Around 35 years ago now.

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  Just an utopy, like in my own life: Get freedom and remove dependencies.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  Haxe is my new girlifriend, till AS3 left with the kids, and all the other ones didn't bring so much love when darkness rushed in my life. I still remember when for the 1st time she told me: "Do you want to play with macros?". Till this time, love never stopped, and light came back to my world.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  A unit-test framework, that I wrote previously in typescript, just the week before. Was a nice exercise to discover the basics.

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  It's called hexMachina, it's a community project, an architectural framework born in 2003/2004 (in AS2). I work on it daily and we use it at Docler as a foundation for one of our products.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  I think it was when I realized that I could create my own DSL, a compile time DSL (oh man!) that could even describe itself. Like many developers, I was fascinated by getting some tools to create my own domain language. Haxe gave to me this opportunity, and much more than I could expect... When a general purpose language is capable to redesign itself, it gives you a taste of infinity. Haxe reconciled me to programming.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  Reliable compiler services, and bring back Simn from Zelda's world.

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  Macros. It's one of the best tools ever made. It pushed me to explore other languages that offers this feature, it's so powerful !

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  Last night Haxe saved my life

  • Last thoughts:

  I feel really excited to come to Seattle, to meet the american community and in a broad manner to connect IRL with the whole community. The best think that haxe got is its community.

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• 

  David Mouton

  Software Architect at Onepoint

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  David Mouton

  Software Architect at Onepoint

  Originally design director and professor, David gradually switched into software engineering and became Happy Technologies CTO. Thanks to a 15 years experience in web app conception, he gives his support to application architecture problems and development choices. He also manages the development team, promoting agile practices, industrialization and continuous improvement. Convinced by knowledge sharing and open source development, he commits himself with various community activities.

  Sessions held by David

  • Code Of War

    Code of War is a platform for developers of any level, to learn Haxe and improve their coding skills while playing through a real game. It's an AI programming game where you write a bot to conquer the galaxy, planet by planet.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  household, clearly not the best time of the week

  • How about Wednesday night?

  Watching the last episode of The Magicians

  • What was awesome about last year?

  Speaker at Devoxx was very impressive. And the party in Amsterdam with other Haxians was a little bit like The Hangover, the movie ;)

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Well, after 7 years, I left my job at the beginning of the year. I am now looking for new challenges, something able to excite and to blossom me.

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  A text based RPG in Basic on Atari

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. Good tools make good workers

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  Haxe is a very much better tool than Javascript.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  Heidi, a large scale web application to customize products online.

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  Sadly, as a web architect i only use haxe on sides projects. I spent my free time coding the hace summit website and code of war, an haxe playground.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  Don't use Haxe. It's such a powerful, robust, pleasant tool that it's could be addictive. Love is a drug and every haxe coder is a junky.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  I would love a better Intellij support and and es6 target.

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  The community of course.

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  Keep calm and code Haxe

  • Last thoughts:

  Life should be easier with source code.

  close
• 

  Dan Goldstein

  Founder at Hyper Awesome Entertainment LLC

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  Dan Goldstein

  Founder at Hyper Awesome Entertainment LLC

  Dan is a creative entrepreneur, game designer and software engineer who focuses on games, play, and the processes and technologies that support programming and design. He is interested in the mechanisms that attract and direct user attention, and how different varieties of media stimulate us to wonder, plan, empathize, and become invested in our own stories that we create around them. His games have won numerous awards, and often focus on online and in-person multiplayer modes of play.

  Sessions held by Dan

  • Console Punks: Haxe for Xbox, PlayStation, and Beyond

    In late 2016 we released "Dungeon Punks" on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Steam, and the Web. We share our experiences including what went wrong and what went right targeting this diverse set of platforms using an unorthodox combination of Haxe and Unity. This talk should be relevant for anyone interested in doing console game development using Haxe. We will cover both our unusual technical approach as well as our thoughts on what methods might be useful going forward on future cross-platform game projects. Pitfalls unique to console development will be covered in a way that is relevant across a variety of technologies and engine choices.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  It really varies! Sunday mornings I usually go for a run, but Saturday mornings I like to be walking around, exploring the city, hiking, or just sleeping in and enjoying brunch with friends if the weather isn't cooperating.

  • How about Wednesday night?

  Wednesday night is cooking something interesting for dinner at home or hanging out with friends, either to play board games, discuss books, or go to a talk or show. In the summer it might be an outdoor concert.

  • What was awesome about last year?

  I started doing a lot more running with a team here, and that's been a lot of fun.

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Haxe 4.0! I'm also hoping to release one or more online multiplayer games, and looking forward to interacting with the players on them.

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  When I was six years old my mom and I used to type in games from magazines that were printed out in Basic, and save them to tape! There were always typos and bugs, but once we got the game working I would be able to mess around with the code to see what would happen. It was both frustrating as well as a lot of fun. And it led to a lifetime of enjoying programming and creative work.

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  It's clear to me that a lot of the work we do as programmers is repetitive, and therefore ripe for automation. Things like boilerplate code, common idioms, re-specification of the same thing more than once, and structures that we employ in a repeated fashion to facilitate design patterns. Succinct code makes it easier to make changes and correct problems, and removing these repetitive tasks can improve our ability to get things done.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  Haxe has a wonderful type system that helps in several ways. First of all, it removes much of one pointless burden from the programmer: the re-specification of types where they are easily implied. When refactoring or changing things, this means fewer conflicts and less writing. Additionally, its support of Abstracts and static imports allows code to be written in a more natural location and can contribute to both readability and type safety, leading to fewer defects.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  Dungeon Punks, a console game we released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, PC, and the web in late 2016.

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  I'm currently working on a variety of game creation tools and small multiplayer games. I've also recently been using Haxe to create some experimental programming language tools.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  If you want to write code in an elegant and easy to use language that you'll be able to keep re-using on future projects on practically any platform, there are few good choices other than Haxe. You could use C++, but it's fairly slow to compile, rather painful in terms of cross-platform concerns, and tricky to say the least if you want to run code on the web. You could use Javascript, but it's not highly performant and you might have a tough time porting the runtime to some environments. And there are others you can use for desktop platforms. But for breadth, re-use, and code quality, it's hard to find a language that compares to Haxe.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  I would make initialization of member variables consistent across all target platforms, to avoid surprises when running on a new target. (i.e. Float should always start out as the same value regardless of target platform)

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  Hard to say... because it always seems to change for the better!

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  Just the word "Haxe" is good enough for me!

  • Last thoughts:

  I've been excited to see Haxe grow and improve every year, and I'm certain this one will be no exception!

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• 

  Jeff Ward

  Co-Founder and Principal Engineer at Woot Math

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  Jeff Ward

  Co-Founder and Principal Engineer at Woot Math

  Jeff is a Co-Founder and Principal Engineer at Woot Math. He loves Haxe because he’s lazy, impatient, and forgetful -- that is, he appreciates the benefits of a cross-platform, efficient, type-safe language like Haxe. Woot Math adopted Haxe about 3 years ago and now uses almost 100k lines of Haxe code to implement a market-leading real-time polling app for the Math classroom.

  Sessions held by Jeff

  • Better stacks with Haxe: Let’s build a web app from the ground up

    Remember LAMP -- the Linux / Apache / MySQL / PHP web stack? Ahh the (good?) ol’ days. We’ll build a web app on Linux from the ground up with a Node.js backend, Mongo database, and modular HTML5 widgets on the frontend -- all using Haxe. Maybe we’ll throw in SocketIO or Google SSO, just for fun. I’ll showcase a number of handy Haxe macros, components, and best practices I've picked up along the way.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  Sleep in... then make a big breakfast for the family! Weekday mornings I usually skip breakfast and just drink coffee. So Saturday breakfasts are special.

  • How about Wednesday night?

  Wednesday's are hectic dad mode -- my wife goes to a ladies group, and the kids have various activities. So I'm doing well just to keep everyone alive. "Bonus points" if they're in bed on time. "Epic win" if they took showers, finished homework, and didn't eat ice cream for dinner.

  • What was awesome about last year?

  I really enjoy playing piano. I'm not very good at it, but I'm learning, and so in the past (couple) years, I've been making good strides in that. I combine that with my love of technology through the use of a digital keyboard, midi controllers, and virtual instruments. A dream project is to leverage Haxe for scripting audio plugins or even creating virtual instruments.

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  I love learning and growing. No matter how much I learn, I’m always finding there’s more to know (The alarming rate at which I forget things maybe contributes to this. Ha!) I think some (perhaps most, perhaps all) people are created with a thirst for learning, for discovering the world and all it’s fascinating systems and designs. Right now I aspire to learn more the Haxe type system, the HL runtime, and other Haxe frameworks and best practices. I want to learn more about music, teaching, parenting, and God’s will for my life. I strive to never consider myself as having “arrived.”

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  When I was about 6 years old, we got a Tandy 1000 SX (16 colors on that beast.) I scoured the local library and magazine rack for BASIC code snippets and really enjoyed the thrill of entering (and tweaking) the programs into the computer. At some point early on, I tried to make a paint program, then fighting and adventure games.

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  Ha, I try not to. But my basic philosophy toward coding is to build things that you enjoy and that are useful, and build them quickly. I like to build small, modular, à-la-carte pieces. The simpler the better. I tend to roll my own solutions, for better or worse, as I like to understand how things work. Rapid progress and iteration helps me stay engaged.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  Haxe is super efficient in a lot of ways: it’s a high-level language with garbage collection, closures, and complex data structures, its type system lets me express code in a self-documenting and future-proof way, the compiler helps me save time by avoiding typos and common mistakes, and of course, the cross-platform targets means that I can leverage code and expertise no matter what I’m working on. All this means I can prototype and build my projects very quickly, without sacrificing the robustness of the codebase.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  One of the first things I built in Haxe was a project called hxScout -- a bit ambitious, looking back! I wanted to be able to profile Haxe C++ applications in the same way I profiled Adobe AIR projects, so it was modeled after Adobe Scout. I didn’t know much about C++ or runtimes, so it was a great learning experience. It was also awesome getting to work closely with Haxians on the hxcpp side like Hugh, Lars, and Sven, as well as Joshua on the OpenFL side. And who can forget mild frustrations vented on the forums, with Juraj and others offering sound advice.

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  Right now I'm building Woot Math Polls - a real-time polling application focused on the math classroom. It's built with almost 100k lines of Haxe, targeting vanilla JS in the browser. Teachers can run quick polls in their classrooms to gauge student understanding. Polls goes beyond your basic quizzing interfaces -- multiple choice, short answer, real-time feedback -- by providing innovative features for math tasks: graphing, equations, tables, and checking algebraically equivalent answers. The frontend app itself is 100% Haxe, and some backend features are built on Node.js from our Haxe codebase. Other tech we use includes Ruby, Sidekiq, AngularJS, Riot.js, MySQL, and MongoDB.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  Haxe is extremely efficient, offering developers the right balance of tools for rapid prototyping, expressiveness, and flexibility, all while preserving maintainable, self-documenting code.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  The biggest problem of Haxe is that not enough people use it. I would force more developers and organizations to adopt it smile. But seriously, maybe one of the causes of that is fragmentation. On many levels. The fragmentation of targets is inherent. As are framework and API preferences. There is also a steep learning curve that creates fragmentation of developer skill -- those who deeply understand Haxe and all the capability it provides, and those who just pick it up and want to build something fun. I think something that could help is an extra measure of respect, humility, and grace when interacting with the community. It’s important to realize we’re all enjoying this tool and using it for different purposes and with different experiences. And yet, Haxe must not lose its identity, maintaining a strong and consistent vision, so that there are core principles at the center of our diverse community.

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  I think that would be the core value of Haxe I mentioned above -- efficiency, expressiveness, flexibility, all while preserving maintainable, self-documenting code. As long as I can do that, Haxe will be my language... err, my weapon of choice.

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  See http://jcward.com/ama_haxe.png

  • Last thoughts:

  I really appreciate the Haxe community! Thanks to all the creators, contributors, target maintainers, framework authors, vocal supporters, issue filers, thought leaders, retweeters, and users of the Haxe ecosystem. Thanks to all who have personally helped and worked with me along the way. Cheers!

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• 

  Scott Pultz

  Chief Architect at Flowplay

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  Scott Pultz

  Chief Architect at Flowplay

  Scott serves as the Chief Architect at Flowplay and recently led the transition of Flowplay's top product, Vegasworld, from Flash to Haxe. Scott has been with Flowplay for 10+ years. Prior to this, he held senior engineering positions at Intentional Software and Monolith Productions.

  Sessions held by Scott

  • Deep Dive on Porting ActionScript to Haxe

    Flowplay recently completed the transition of their product VegasWorld from ActionScript to Haxe. Learn about the strategies taken, tools used, and specific patterns which enabled the successful port of over 1 million lines of code.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  I go to a coffee shop with my wife, child, and baby.

  • How about Wednesday night?

  I put my kids to bed and then play Super Nintendo games.

  • What was awesome about last year?

  My second daughter was born and then we took her to see a total solar eclipse.

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Spending a week in Kauai!

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  I programmed in Logo to make turtle graphics and control LEGO robots.

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  When it comes to code, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are so many aesthetic, structural, and naming choices available that it is rare to find people who entirely agree with each other. Our best hope is that we can at least tolerate each other's code :)

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  Porting our hit game Vegas World from ActionScript to Haxe.

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  We are still developing Vegas World in Haxe. It is a virtual world with social interaction, parties, and gambling games.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  We use Haxe because it is an open source platform which allows us to target HTML5 and native mobile from a single codebase. Haxe lines up closely with Actionscript which allowed the porting of our project rather than the a complete re-write which would have been required had we chosen a different platform.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  I would add the ability to compile and debug native iOS from a Windows PC.

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  Joshua Granick

  Managing Director of OpenFL

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  Joshua Granick

  Managing Director of OpenFL

  Joshua is Managing Director of OpenFL, husband of his one true love and father of six adorable children. Joshua has had the honor of serving as Director of VR/AR Innovation with Deutsche Telekom, Senior Developer Evangelist with BlackBerry and HP/Palm, and over a decade as a project lead and entrepreneur. Joshua melds a rare passion for people and a rich technical background to enable developers large and small.

  Sessions held by Joshua

  • OpenFL Next

    Gain deeper insight into the vision that drives the OpenFL project, while taking a closer look at new features introduced in the latest release. This session will help bring clarity to the roadmap, focus areas for the team and why the future of OpenFL is so bright.

  • OpenFL Advanced

    Take your skills to another level as OpenFL founder Joshua Granick dives into advanced topics valuable for both intermediate and advanced developers of OpenFL. Accelerate your rendering using Tilemaps, integrate your pipeline with Adobe Animate CC and boost your performance with hardware features, and more!

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  Reading a book aloud to my wife

  • How about Wednesday night?

  Taking the kids out for a walk

  • What was awesome about last year?

  Our new baby Matthew was born!

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Reading much more

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  Building a "Choose Your Own Adventure" game for DOS

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  Like spoken languages, I believe that programming allows for communication of ideas and experiences. The best programming language is the one that allows you to do this most naturally.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  As much as possible, I believe that publishing content on multiple platforms should be a business decision -- not a technical one. Haxe has been indispensable for allowing this kind of freedom with a high degree of consistency and quality.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  Porting Flash content to Palm webOS

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  I am focused most on helping other people succeed in their work, and it has been really rewarding. Everyone needs a Good Samaritan one time or another!

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  JavaScript is flexible, simple to write and nearly ubiquitous, but it can be hard to optimize -- especially on mobile and embedded platforms. C/C++ is less flexible, and is usually slower to write, but is powerful for optimal performance.

  What if you want both?

  Haxe provides fast, flexible development with near-ideal performance on all the platforms we need. In fact, the OpenFL project has been used on mobile, desktops, command-line tools, servers, console games, websites, smart TVs, IOT boards and set-top boxes... delivering high-quality projects with less effort.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  I would lean into Haxe's potential for being an ideal way to share third-party code, from CommonJS modules to Java JAR files or native shared libraries.

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  I feel the OpenFL Community of Haxe developers have created a positive and helpful atmosphere that I never want to change.

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  "I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow." - Abraham Lincoln

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  Thomas J. Webb

  Chief Software Architect at Osaka Red

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  Thomas J. Webb

  Chief Software Architect at Osaka Red

  Thomas is a versatile, self-taught programmer who has extensive experience making websites and server-side applications, desktop applications, iOS and Android apps and embedded software. He used his music theory, foreign language and general software versatility to help build two music making games and an app that sings your texts for you and from these efforts has his name on a patent. He is very excited about the possibilities Haxe provides and has used it for many recent side-projects of his. He also makes his own beer, bread and tortillas on a regular basis and occasionally runs his own food booth serving Southern Italian street food.

  Sessions held by twebb

  • Literate Programming with Haxe

    Literate programming is an old idea first championed by legendary computer scientist Donald Knuth. Here we will go over how some simple changes you can do to your build process to have literate haxe files, documentation that has functioning code built-into it. We also go over ways to bring literate haxe to the next level with the power of haxe macros.

  • The Case for Doing Everything in Haxe

    Increasing complexity of requirements leads to more and more applications stringing together multiple different technologies. Here we see a case for a single code base in Haxe for all parts, plus techniques for taking advantage of Haxe's powerful features to prevent locking yourself into any one framework.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  Probably getting the kids ready for one of our weekend adventures.

  • How about Wednesday night?

  Reading my kids a bedtime story, then afterward I might work on a hobby that can be done when I'm sleepy like starting the process of making a loaf of bread, making tortillas for later, etc.

  • What was awesome about last year?

  The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild coming out and also personally, getting settled into a new place. Also closing it off with being in Japan for almost a month and being able to work remotely while doing so.

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Two huge road trips, finishing one of my major projects and one of my batches of mead finally maturing enough to be drinkable.

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  Probably adding javascript for effects on a web page in my late teens. Other early contenders are using basic on my graphing calculator to cheat in math class (writing simple programs to do all the work for me) and a command-line application to quiz me in vocabulary when I was studying German, written in C.

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  Coding is like writing. No, coding is writing. But it must be readable by two audiences - humans and computers. The principles that apply to good writing, such as clarity and berevity, apply to coding. In the interest of allowing humans to understand what you wrote, you need to know when to tell the whole story depth first or when to give a reader's digest, allowing them to look up details in the function if they wish.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  Haxe is a modern object-oriented language with modern features that encourages encapsulation. While it has dynamic targets, it's type safety at compile-time allows you to be clear about what a thing is and avoid the plague of unclear writing, bad analogies.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  I made a game for toddlers using OpenFL in under a month, which you can get in the app store (Zany Faces).

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  Currently, I am working on a minimalistic horror hack and slash RPG I'm making and a 2D RPG/Visual novel engine for it.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  If you have a complex client/server application in haxe, you can share the code between server and client without having to be married to a certain framework. If you like Xamarin for the client but want js on the server, you can write the common code (or, indeed, all of the code) in haxe. You can make the choice of where to run some parts of the code based on performance considerations without having to rewrite too much code.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  It would be self-hosting (haxe written in haxe). Bonus if it worked with any of the targets (so you could even have a js runtime compile haxe code if need be).

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  The flexibility you have in unifying types and being able to specify an anonymous structure as the type.

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  Front: Haxe: writes in javascript, so you don't have to. Back: a source listing of how a simple hello world program transpiles to various targets

  • Last thoughts:

  Haxe is amazing technology and it needs some basic infrastructure like better IDE support to start finding greater adoption in other niches than gaming. I'm confident it will get there in the next few years.

  close
• 

  Laurent Deketelaere

  HexMachina Programmer at Docler holding

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  Laurent Deketelaere

  HexMachina Programmer at Docler holding

  After 10 years as a Freelancer in Flash technology, few projects on mobiles with Cordova, Laurent now spends his time with Haxe. Early adopters of pixlib framework (2004), he is a part of hexMachina's team.

  Sessions held by Laurent

  • A deep dive into hexUnit

    During this presentation, we will see in detail all the possibilities offered by hexUnit. How to play with metadata, asserts, notifiers and asynchronous testing. hexUnit is the hexMachina’s Unit Test library.

  • hexMachina status

    Let's have a quick look into changes made since Amsterdam Summit and describe our future plan to release a stable version of hexMachina.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  Family time!

  • How about Wednesday night?

  Should be special?

  • What was awesome about last year?

  Wasn't the best year...

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Let see what happen, it will be amazing!

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  Flash 5 for sure, and maybe other stuff before but I don't really remember

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  Tabs, or spaces, that is the question

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  Who knows the answer?

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  Only POC before joining Docler

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  It's a front-end web project, which was converted from AS3, with some AS2 legacy. ^^ Currently, it is strongly refactored to get the best of Haxe language.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  What is more awesome than take pleasure in daily work. Haxe do what you are expected for a programming language. And if something is not like you want, let's play with Macro.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  The communication to the outside community. If you are not supported by someone already in place, who follows the news. It could be difficult to know where to find the best answer.

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  The compiler speed

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  Haxe trusts in developers

  • Last thoughts:

  Let discuss it in real

  close
• 

  Adam Breece

  Software engineer and automation enthusiast

  Close

  

  Adam Breece

  Software engineer and automation enthusiast

  Sessions held by Adam

  • OpenFL project configuration for power users

    Using a project.hxp file allows you write your OpenFL project configuration in Haxe. This makes it possible to implement complex, dynamic project behavior that would be incredibly difficult - or even impossible - to accomplish with an XML project file. Come learn the basics of configuring an OpenFL project with Haxe. Then see some examples of how FlowPlay is utilizing this to feature to not only make project maintenance easier, but also improve day-to-day developer productivity.

  • What I wish I’d known when creating our mobile development pipeline

    A reliable and scalable development pipeline is a huge time saver for any development team. Unfortunately, creating one isn’t always a straightforward process. The added complexity that comes with targeting multiple platforms through Haxe and OpenFL only makes things more difficult. Come see how FlowPlay has tackled some of the unique challenges of creating a reliable, scalable development pipeline for cross-platform mobile development.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  yoga

  • How about Wednesday night?

  DM a Dungeons and Dragons game

  • What was awesome about last year?

  I made Diamond rank in Rocket League

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Getting to Champion rank in Rocket League.

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  Converting normal text into "l33t sp34k". 8th grade me thought that was super cool.

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began. - Friedrich Nietzsche Write first, then refactor when it becomes obvious how things should have been written. It's hard to hold yourself to the second part, and even harder to convince your boss, but very much worth it

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  When it becomes obvious I should have been targeting C++ instead of Javascript, I have much less work to do.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  A Pong clone using OpenFL.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  Write once, run anywhere without having to ship - and run - the full chromium runtime with your application. Shame on you, Electron.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  More/better support for functional programming style. Immutable classes, terse syntax for defining functions and chaining function calls, etc. Basically let me write OCaml or F#.

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  The t-shirt says "haxe" in faded, vintage-style letters.

  close
• 

  Andy Li

  Senior researcher at TCL Research

  Close

  

  Andy Li

  Senior researcher at TCL Research

  Andy Li maintains continuous integration and software packages for the Haxe Foundation.

  He works in TCL Research (HK) as a senior researcher, in which he works with the computer vision team that applies deep learning to TV and mobile devices.

  He obtained his Ph.D. in the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. He is interested in programming as well as mobile user interface, interactivity, installation art, and generative graphics.

  Sessions held by andy

  • Introductory Haxe workshop

    Learn the basics of Haxe by writing a simple game together. Discover what makes Haxe so powerful in cross-platform development. This hand-on workshop is designed for absolute Haxe beginners. Participates should have some coding experience (in other languages) though. Remember to bring a laptop (and a geeky friend if possible).

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  Gaming if I'm awake...

  • How about Wednesday night?

  Probably also gaming since my girlfriend goes to yoga class every Wednesday night...

  • What was awesome about last year?

  It is always the people! Meeting the people I know by GitHub/Twitter name in real life was quite an experience.

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Hope to meet a bunch of new US-based Haxe users :D

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  An installation art project in which I wrote a program to compute and visualize the geometry of the sculpture before we build the thing. It was written in ActionScript 3.

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  I have a background of creative coding since that's what I studied during bachelor degree. I think coding is essentially a generic tool, and it is definitely applicable to creating art. Traditional coding may be unintuitive since we do not have the WYSIWYG experience as in painting, but it doesn't mean coding is not a good painting tool. The generative art creation process is more like an exploration, in which we let the code shows us unexpected results.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  I like how Haxe can be used for very different things. I created some interactive installation and generative graphics with Haxe when I was in University. I built research prototypes and did data analysis with Haxe for my Ph.D. and my current employer. Since it is capable for many things, it let me explore more different areas.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  I ported CASALib, which was a collection of ActionScript utilities, to Haxe. I did that as a way to get familiar with the Haxe language and the standard library.

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  I'm more of a Haxe contributor than a user right now. At work, I'm mostly using Python (for deep learning). I've been finding ways to use the Haxe Python target instead but there are still some rough edges (e.g. operator overloading).

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  It is not a single use case, but the most awesome thing is Haxe is good at (almost) every use case.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  Clearer separation of Haxe types and target types like how we have Haxe String vs cpp.NativeString. I think it would be nice to extend this concept to other types like Int, Array, Map, functions etc. It would be easier to write externs.

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  That was a hard question... I like most aspects of Haxe but I can see potential improvements in every area. I would keep the C-like syntax since that's what I have settled, but that doesn't mean I want the syntax stay 100% unchanged. Some fine-tuning like the new function type syntax in Haxe 4 is pretty good.

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  "Stay sane in cross-platform chaos."

  • Last thoughts:

  See you in Haxe Summit!

  close
• 

  Allan Dowdeswell

  Chief at Confidant Communications

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  Allan Dowdeswell

  Chief at Confidant Communications

  Trained as a graphic designer, Allan has been working with print and multimedia since 1995. After a job as a Flash programmer he began his own freelance company, Confidant Communications, to achieve a better balance between right and left-brain work. Haxe has been part of his toolkit since 2009 and he uses it as much as possible whenever interactivity or animation is required.

  Sessions held by Allan

  • Haxe: A dream-come-true for browser interactivity

    I am a graphic and multimedia designer who became heavily invested in Flash then found a dream-come-true in Haxe when it became apparent that Flash would die. This presentation will be designed to whet the appetites of those people considering Haxe for browser-based interactivity, and show how it is a solid investment. I will present examples of different real-world projects done over nine years using different display methods including OpenFL, OpenLayers, EaselJS, DOM/CSS and SVG. I will explain the rationale in choosing the technologies for each solution, and discuss the process of doing Flash-to-Haxe conversion, dual-compiled interactive pieces, and working with external Javascript libraries. I will describe some of the options for IDEs today and my preferred development toolkit, and my perceived advantages of using Haxe going into the future.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  Make pancakes or crepes for the family.

  • How about Wednesday night?

  I spend it wishing it was Thursday night (that's badminton night).

  • What was awesome about last year?

  I got to be the villain in a play.

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Haxe Summit!

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  Probably to print " is stupid" in an infinite loop on screen.

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  I consider the hours I spend using my mind to create code to perform a certain function. I consider how error-prone it is, and how a single wrong character can ruin the whole compile or successful operation. Then I reflect on how DNA is actually code that is insanely more complex and underlies the intricate functions of life. I am left in awe of what sort of designer must have made it.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  Haxe is my language of choice wherever possible. I don't know if it adds to the above insight more than any other language, but it gives me the most enjoyment.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  Building a clone of a Flash application for HTML5.

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  I am converting a 3D furniture scene builder from Flash into Haxe.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  Haxe is ideal for use in browser-based interactivity. Regarding the past, it is easy to port old Actionscript or Javascript code. For the present, it has an excellent compiler and libraries, and integrates seamlessly with whatever external libraries (Javascript or others) you want to use. In the future, you will be positioned well to target whatever technologies become widespread, such as WebAssembly.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  Because I don't use Haxe every day, I actually find the addition of new language features to be a bit too rapid for my ability to learn.

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  The awesome community!

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  My codebase can beat up your codebase.

  • Last thoughts:

  I hope they serve Schweinshaxe at the summit.

  close
• 

  Juraj Kirchheim

  Haxe Addict

  Close

  

  Juraj Kirchheim

  Haxe Addict

  Juraj has started his journey through Haxe a little over ten years ago. Absorbed by this adventure, he never found the time to learn how to write short bios.

  Sessions held by Juraj

  • Reliable package management with lix

    Lix is a new package manager for Haxe that strives to provide a remedy for many of haxelib's inadequacies. Its main focus is on providing reproducible and contained project setups, that scale up to big teams, complex dependency graphs and long running projects. With over a year in the wild, it is now ready for a larger audience.

• 

  Craig Robinson

  VP of Mobile at FlowPlay

  Close

  

  Craig Robinson

  VP of Mobile at FlowPlay

  Sessions held by craig

  • Building Haxe/OpenFL Native Extensions for iOS and Android

    One of the many advantages of Haxe is that it makes it easy to target multiple platforms with your code. Most mobile games, however, need to integrate 3rd party native extensions for things like IAP, analytics, ads, crash reporting and other business critical features using Haxe native extensions. Writing Haxe native extensions can be complicated, especially for developers who don't have native development experience. This talk is meant to help make it easier for developers to write their own native extensions.

• 

  Phil Chertok

  Marketing Director at Haxe Foundation

  Close

  

  Phil Chertok

  Marketing Director at Haxe Foundation

  Sessions held by Phil

  • Blossom.hx: Growing Haxe Together

    Join the garden party with the Haxe Foundation's new Marketing Director Phil Chertok. Come discuss how the foundation and community will cultivate growth for Haxe in the near and long-term future.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  Brazillian Jiu Jitsu followed by brunch with my Daughter

  • How about Wednesday night?

  Craft Beer @ the local gastropub

  • What was awesome about last year?

  Incredible Personal Growth

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Engrossing myself within the Haxe community

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  Hacking Gorillas in QBasic

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  KISS, Single Responsibility Principle and Dependency Injection are some of the most pivotal design considerations I've thought about for in the last few years.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  May we bow down to the "mysterious gods" that have blessed us with minject

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  Converting a Flash based kiosk application to HTML

  • Tell us a little about your current Haxe project:

  It's a large app distribution and video streaming platform targeting one of the biggest organizations in the world.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  The beauty of the web without the suck of JavaScript.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  Emphasis on polishing existing stuff vs building new stuff

  • If there was one thing about Haxe that you could forever keep from changing, what would that be?

  The spirit of the community and the platform

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  import haxe.macro.Context;

  • Last thoughts:

  I'm incredibly excited to be part of this community and am eagerly looking forward to engaging with as many people as possible in the near future.

  close
• 

  Robert Konrad

  Researcher at Technische Universitat Darmstadt

  Close

  

  Robert Konrad

  Researcher at Technische Universitat Darmstadt

  Robert is a modest human being but was cursed with a mission to overcome the challenges of high-performance cross-platform development of multimedia applications. He is suffering in silence from the intricate details of different system-level APIs and hardware quirks but nonetheless appears to be mentally stable most of the time.

  Sessions held by Robert

  • Kha & OpenFL

    Unveiling the next phase of Kha's multi-decade master plan this year's talk will focus on the delicate topic of cooperation across multiple big open source projects. It will demonstrate what Kha can do for other Haxe projects like HaxeUI, Heaps and OpenFL and address the technological and psychological challenges of such cooperation efforts. Besides all of that it will also include the yearly, general progress update on Kha.

  • Code Along with Kha

    Kha has its own way of doing things but after two hours of intense Kha training it will also be your way of doing things. We will debug and profile code for multiple platforms and figure out robust and fast workflows.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  I go to sleep.

  • How about Wednesday night?

  I stare at the Kha IRC chat in utter confusion.

  • What was awesome about last year?

  Watching the steady decline of humanity from the comforts of my very cozy office chair.

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  Talking friends and family into calling me Dr. Konrad and playing more Super Nt.

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  It might sound weird even for my standards but my first ever project was an application which analyzed Latin poetry.

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  Yes, but this was forced on me - I recently played through the "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" game.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  Oh, I would sure hope Haxe didn't have anything to do with that.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  It was Kha.

  • Sell us on your most awesome Haxe use-case in five sentences or less:

  With Haxe and Kha you can get even the fanciest graphical applications running everywhere - browsers, mobiles, consoles, even inside of other applications - and because it can cross-compile everything, this will continue to be the case, no matter what craziness the IT giants come up with next.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  Optional manual memory management it would be.

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  Haxe - If it's good enough for Kha, it's good enough for you

  close
• 

  Eric Bishton

  Software Architect and Engineer

  Close

  

  Eric Bishton

  Software Architect and Engineer

  Eric has enjoyed overseeing the development of the Haxe Toolkit plugin for IntelliJ IDEA for the past four years. The decades before that have found him working in all manner of products, from GIS databases, to cell phone standards, to family-oriented hand-held game systems and TiVo DVRs. Along the way, he has worked at every level of the software stack from device drivers to UI.

  Sessions held by Eric

  • Get your project humming with IntelliJ IDEA

    A short walk-through of typical developer workflows using IntelliJ IDEA, including project setup, coding environment, and debugging helps and hints.

  Speaker interview

  • What do you do on a Saturday morning?

  These days, I'm working on the Haxe plugin for IntelliJ IDEA.

  • How about Wednesday night?

  Usually the same. Sunday is my day off when I cook for the family.

  • What was awesome about last year?

  Nothing horrible happened. :)

  • What are you looking forward to this year?

  The Haxe Summit.

  • What is the first thing you ever used coding for?

  A video game, when I was 16 years old.

  • Have you ever had any philosophical or aesthetic thoughts about code? Tell us a little about that:

  Any code you write that you feel is clever, or that you are particularly proud of, needs a comment.

  • How does Haxe come into that?

  Not sure that it does.

  • What was your first Haxe project?

  Some logging code for TiVo.

  • If you could change one thing about Haxe, what would it be?

  Not sure about that one...

  • You are getting a Haxe T-Shirt and have to wear it to work every day (let’s assume it is self-cleaning, ok?). The T-Shirt says:

  Can I get a polo? With a little logo instead of a crocodile? Yeah. That's great.

  close