Well, actually i made zero assumptions. Theres tonnes of markdown editors that work in the browser in real time. I assume the wiki syntax is not that much "heavier" to work with, if it is its another lol for the wiki team.

And by PHP i mean if this rewrite is done partly because of speed, why not build the parser in a compiled language? Its just silly that you have to work with PHP as its one of the worst languages out there in terms of dx and features.

I assume its 2020 where clients are "fast enough" to handle a syntax transformation like markdown -> HTML

"For me PHP sits in the middle as a poor language, and still slow compared to any compiled languages." No assumptions whatsoever.

2020: mobile clients. Yes, they're where the rest of the web was in 2005. Yes, they're ubiquitous.

I cant believe users on legacy phones (phones from say 2010-ish era) would be writing new content on wikipedia actively. I dont care if you have the newest iphone, you still dont write anything, you just read. For those 0.00001% of users who actually create new content they most def are not using a phone to do this.

> "For me PHP sits in the middle as a poor language, and still slow compared to any compiled languages." No assumptions whatsoever.

Its not an assumption. PHP is slower than a compiled langauge. simple and easy. Need speed? Dont do it in a compiled language. Period.

Not exactly accurate regarding mobile editing. Edits on mobile-heavy wikis are up 18% YoY, which we attribute to improvements in the mobile editing interface. We have people who edit on T9 interfaces. Not many, but they exist.