Haxe as a better JavaScript: a practical guide for making front end development fun, fast and less overwhelming

"JavaScript Fatigure" is real. In the last 5 years JS has moved from being something used to progressively enhance a web page, to being the driving engine that powers entire web apps. And as we try to do more with JavaScript, we need more tooling. Webpack, Babel, CSS Modules and type checking. And we needed more frameworks: we went from jQuery everywhere to Backbone, Angular, React and Redux and MobX and Preact and more. It some point, it got really, really complex, hard to get started, easy to break, and less fun to build.

In this talk I explore how Haxe, a mature programming language that compiles to (among other things) JavaScript, is a great way to make front end development fun, fast, and less overwhelming.

I'll give a fair comparison of the strengths and weaknesses compared to JavaScript, and then explore how Haxe's unique strengths can make for happy web development, how you can happily interact with JS tooling (like Webpack!) and frameworks (like React!) while avoiding feeling like you're drowning in front-end complexity.