Development Tools & IDE's

(full disclosure: I may repost this on the haxe google group list as well as I think there are some people here who are not there, and vice versa)

Alright guys. We are here because we recognize haXe presents a massive opportunity to build truly cross-platform applications without worrying about depending on proprietary plugins or having to learn a completely new language. I only have one big problem.

We have lots of developers in our organization who are uncomfortable with the command line. I don't consider these folks lesser, just different, but because of this these developers will never be able to transition to haXe. These are folks who are accustomed to working hand-in-hand with designers who build interfaces in Flash that are then built out using AS3 in FlashDevelop or Flash Builder. As we know this is a very clean, smooth workflow!

I hear all the time from people just discovering haXe that they cannot believe more people aren't aware of it. I believe poor tools support is the reason it has not been more widely adopted, because I think there are tons of developers who would never consider it until we fix this problem.

Now, I know FlashDevelop has haXe support and Eclipse has eclihx and FDT for Linux and Mac users. However, the real power of haXe for developers coming from Flash lies in libraries and frameworks like NME and jeash. FlashDevelop and eclihx/FDT have no knowledge of NMML files, and if you are building an NME project you need to maintain both NMML and hxml project files or else the intellisense doesn't work. I have personally found the code completion incredibly slow or doesn't work most of the time in eclihx/FDT and it has no provisions for even the simplest time savers offered by Flash Builder such as automatic import statements. I have heard rumblings that the FDT folks are working on NME/NMML support but it is obvious there is a ton of work left to be done. The launchers assume a Flex SDK exists, which is completely unnecessary and suggestive that real FDT haXe workflow is a LONG way off.

Because I have no issue with the command line, and even prefer it (like a lot of you I bet!) this has not been a deal breaker for me and I have fully adopted haXe. Heck, I would happily use vi with no code completion or anything and still be a happy camper targeting iOS, Android, WebOS, Flash, and HTML5. For the many otherwise excellent developers who simply work better in a GUI IDE environment, we're sort of leaving them cold.

Does anyone else feel the same that this is sort of a blocking issue? If so, I'd love to work with you in whatever capacity I can to fix it. If we can make haXe viable for our scores of developers, it would be THE solution to our clients' questions about the future of Flash. If I cannot give them halfway decent tools and they need to rely on the command line, they will have to end up looking elsewhere and I feel the result will be substandard in the end (like being stuck in JavaScript with no provision for native mobile). It's just a reality that workflow and tools support is crucial for the majority of developers!

I strongly believe this is the elephant in the room, and THE #1 reason haXe has not absolutely exploded in popularity. I think if this can be solved, certain key factions in the industry will take on haXe and top-shelf contributions will be flowing in moving us all forward. I'm willing to do whatever I can to help make this happen, so if you can help please let the group know so we can get started!

Cheers,
Patrick