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I'd love to know why haxe never caught on mainstream and what it's primary drawbacks are.
My anecdotal experience - not so much about the language itself but the ecosystem:

I was making a short evaluation of platforms for light 2d game/graphic development/prototyping. This being in the context of a fun project with very limited time - having kids and a C++/embedded day job and no intent to analyze core dumps in my spare time.

Haxe was on that list (together with e.g. lua/LÖVE and phaser.io/typescript) and I had high hopes for it. The number of target platforms would make it very attractive to transition from prototype to "publishable" game.

But what turned me down was the documentation and confusing state of competing libraries and target platforms.

E.g samples of a recommended tutorial were not working due to library changes (in very basic initialization functions). I found a solution but there was just too much friction .

So in the end, haxe lost in my evaluation because ... too much choice? I really wanted to have a predefined simple platform and just focus on gameplay.

If somebody has a recommendation for a haxe "starter kit" (compile target, libraries, docs, debugger/IDE/vim plugins ...) that allows to publish to all of desktop / html5 / mobile app then I'd be happy to hear about it. Maybe the next project...

I don't really know. The language in itself is awesome.

My guess is that there are way too many moving pieces since Haxe needs many side projects to be the universal language it promises to be.

When I first learned about and took a look at haxe, there was no good documentation.

Granted, this was six years ago, so it's probably better now.

It's better now: https://haxe.org/manual/introduction.html

It can still be improved, but it's miles better than it was years ago.

The trends chart is a little biased in German-speaking countries because Haxe translates to "ham hock" ... a popular beer garden dish :D