

Facebook readies Hyper-PHP - VonGuard
http://www.sdtimes.com/link/34103
More info surfaces on the Facebook rewrite of PHP.
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jacktasia
Some other Facebook open source stuff:
<http://developers.facebook.com/opensource.php>

One that I liked a lot: <http://phpsh.org/>

It's an interactive shell for php like python's and written in python.

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justinph
That's some serious irony right there.

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CountHackulus
I have to wonder why people are so excited about a PHP compiler when there's
been an open-source one out that runs on top of the IBM Java JIT for a while.
<http://www.projectzero.org/>

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pvg
Chances are because this is likely to be faster and more compatible. I don't
know how what the performance of the IBM one is like but the Quercus pages say
"Performance is 4x mod_php and is comparable with PHP accelerator
performance.". In other words, about as fast as PHP.

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jellisjapan
A Hyper-Hypertext Preprocessor...sounds fast...

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Anon84
LudicrousText preprocessor?

</Spaceball reference>

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trin_
but but we've never actually preprocessed text at ludicrous speed before...

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gkoberger
While it certainly seems that Facebook will release some sort of PHP compiler
tomorrow, this article cited (and linked to) only one (questionable) source.

Are there any credible sources talking about this, because this speculation
mostly seems to be based on the questionable interview from last month(
[http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-
interne...](http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-
internet-5-anonymous-facebook-employee/?full=yes) )

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Zak
I have to wonder why they're writing PHP compilers and PHP refactoring tools
(in Haskell!) instead of just using something different for their front end.

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sanswork
As a few facebook employees have said they have a lot invested in PHP there so
it wouldn't make sense to swap it out.

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Zak
With the sort of tech they're working on, a PHP -> something-not-evil compiler
seems like a pretty reasonable solution.

~~~
sanswork
Any sort of automated compiler is certainly going to miss out on a lot of the
things that make language X better than PHP though would it not? And you're
still talking about a rewrite of all their PHP code which I'm sure is no small
feat.

You're also ignoring dependencies and such in the form of PHP modules that
would have to be redeveloped for the new language. Ensuring your front end
developers are just as capable in language X(and handle the
retraining/learning curve). Why go through all that trouble when PHP will work
just as well for you?

