Re:Ending PHP Support, and the Future of Hack
by aylmao on Thursday September 13, 2018 @03:20AM
(#17976685)
Well, the compiler was its own thing and had very different goals. I'm sure that wouldn't have flown for most use-cases and from what I've read it was used only for running production code because compilation took a while.
HHVM also adds a lot of syntax to make Hack. And moreover I don't doubt Facebook wanted the option to remove backwards compatibility in the future. Issues like MAX_INT and pass-by-reference don't seem pressing enough if you're using the language, but if you're building a compiler or VM small language quirks will be the one exception that break whole potential optimizations and/or ways of architecting things.
Facebook is not concerned with backwards compatibility because they can just change their source code, but PHP is, in order to remain relevant to the community. I honestly think trying to work on the same VM would've caused more issues in the long-run.
HHVM also adds a lot of syntax to make Hack. And moreover I don't doubt Facebook wanted the option to remove backwards compatibility in the future. Issues like MAX_INT and pass-by-reference don't seem pressing enough if you're using the language, but if you're building a compiler or VM small language quirks will be the one exception that break whole potential optimizations and/or ways of architecting things.
Facebook is not concerned with backwards compatibility because they can just change their source code, but PHP is, in order to remain relevant to the community. I honestly think trying to work on the same VM would've caused more issues in the long-run.