Facebook poured loads of money/time into HHVM. While I'm sure PHP also got benefits, your "Otherwise it would probably on life-support right now. " argument fits perfectly on the rest of the biased unsupported arguments.

I used PHP in v4/5 times and had the impression development slowed down until I heard about all the "FB being bullish on PHP" announcements.

php 7.0 has been released 5 years ago, I think it's about time to stop using php5 as an argument for anything related to the present state.

I'm not saying PHP is doing bad today.

I'm saying that back in the days it looked like it will go downhill, but then a big player used it and that saved it.

FB poured a ton of money into Hack/HHVM. Which didn't directly benefit PHP. I do see that it inspired the PHP team to improve, but that's indirect.

> FB poured a ton of money into Hack/HHVM. Which didn't directly benefit PHP

Facebook may not have directly funded PHP, but I know for sure at least one of the HHVM/Hack devs (Sara Golemon)is also a huge contributor to the PHP core.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOveFBc9AyI

https://voicesoftheelephpant.com/2019/07/16/interview-with-s...