

PHP Creator Asks, Is Facebook's HipHop Just a 'Nifty Trick'?  - skennedy
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2010/02/03/03readwriteweb-php-creator-asks-is-facebooks-hiphop-just-a-90057.html

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thaumaturgy
Rasmus made a bunch of reasonable comments and the Times article cut and
spliced them to try to stir up some noise.

i.e., he described the project as a "nifty trick", not "just a nifty trick",
which is an important distinction.

Also, he advocates -- _shock_ \-- tuning your PHP code before turning to tools
like this.

...Somehow, that turned into him asking if it was "just a nifty trick".

This should probably be flagged, it's nonsense.

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w-ll
Who said i didn't like nifty tricks.

As someone who can proudly admit to loving PHP (she makes me $) im fairly
interested in HipHop. I've been thinking about this problem in PHP for some
time, and was this || close to doing exactly what facebook has done.

The ability to write PHP and have it transformed down to C++ and compiled is
pretty sweet. Its PHP with out the PHP. Sure its brand-spanking-new so we all
need to watch and see whats to come. I mean; code is still not released.

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ryanwaggoner
_Noting the amount of hype he's seen lately about the new runtime, Lerdorf
wrote, "I'd love to see those same people get excited about basic profiling
and identifying the most costly areas of an application. Speeding up one of
the faster parts of your system isn't going to give you anywhere near as much
of a benefit as speeding up, or eliminating, one of the slower parts of your
overall system._

Good advice, and one that I've been guilty of myself. Often I find myself
spending an inordinate amount of time on the fixes and enhancements that are
unlikely to yield a huge improvement, instead of focusing on larger issues,
because they're harder or just because everyone is talking about the new shiny
tool.

Not to take the analogy too far, but I think a lot of entrepreneurs do this in
a business sense as well, focusing efforts on the new shiny things (Facebook,
Twitter) instead of the more boring, but proven tools (phone, email). The
bottom line is that you should be strategic in where you spend your time,
instead of chasing whatever the cool kids are talking about.

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durbin
gotta love the NYT completely taking things out of context like a tabloid.

"My "nifty trick" comment to RWW wasn't meant to be negative or belittling of
HipHop PHP in any way. Check the comments <http://bit.ly/cH1qyV> @rasmus

~~~
seldo
This is actually ReadWriteWeb, being syndicated by the NYT. Here's the
original:

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rasmus-lerdorf-php-
hiph...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rasmus-lerdorf-php-hiphop-
facebook.php)

The RWW version has the video that the NYT version mentions but does not
include.

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petewarden
One drum I've been banging is that profiling PHP with XDebug is a lot more
effort than it should be. If I'm on a headless web server, why do I have to
transfer the massive cache grind files to my local machine?

Happily Facebook have an internal lightweight profiler they've open-sourced
called XHProf:

<http://mirror.facebook.net/facebook/xhprof/doc.html>

It provides a web-based instant view of the results, and while it's not as
extensive as XDebug, it's perfect for 95% of my investigations. Just a shame
no one's ever heard of it!

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apgwoz
Sure, a lot of people do not profile and optimize, but has anyone considered
the environmental aspects of this? Faster code (as a result of profiling an
compilation to C++ and then to machine code) = much closer to the metal, which
means more efficiency and less wasted electricity and more space in a rack
somewhere.

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thejo
[http://toys.lerdorf.com/archives/53-HipHop-PHP-Nifty-
Trick.h...](http://toys.lerdorf.com/archives/53-HipHop-PHP-Nifty-Trick.html)

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seldo
It is amusingly typical of Rasmus that he included a long list of flaws in
RWW's own website :-)

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ojbyrne
Some day it will actually appear on github so we can all judge for ourselves.

