"Hack provides instantaneous type checking via a local server that watches the filesystem."
What does this mean?
Hack: a new programming language for HHVM
21–30 of 422 posts
Re: Hack: a new programming language for HHVM
#22Why a brand new language, instead of building or optimizing the PHP backend for HHVM with an existing language like Haxe? http://haxe.org/
It was very important to us to have a gradual and smooth upgrade path, such that you can start using Hack by just tweaking the "Obviously switching to a syntactically incompatible programming language would be at odds with that goal.
Re: Hack: a new programming language for HHVM
#23I'm the manager of the team that developed Hack, and I'm sitting here with some of the language designers. Happy to answer your questions.
Is there any interest in adding named parameters to Hack?
Re: Hack: a new programming language for HHVM
#24I'm the manager of the team that developed Hack, and I'm sitting here with some of the language designers. Happy to answer your questions.
At a glance it looks like Hack is to PHP what TypeScript is to JavaScript. Is that a fair analogy?
Re: Hack: a new programming language for HHVM
#25"Hack provides instantaneous type checking via a local server that watches the filesystem." What does this mean?
On Linux, we use the inotify subsystem to be informed every time you save a source file or switch branches. The hh_server process can then update its data structures immediately, without being explicitly asked.
Re: Hack: a new programming language for HHVM
#26Very excited to play with this. While I know many poo-poo PHP, it still is a pretty decent gateway language. If these type of innovations introduce hobby programmers into more professional practices and concepts, I'm all for it.
Well, it's been poo-pooed for obvious reasons (like Javascript) but those are the languages that are getting all the love in the end, so maybe I should stop programming in a language that I find beautiful (Ruby) and go with the flow.
Yes, I'm slightly bitter :/
Re: Hack: a new programming language for HHVM
#27I'm the manager of the team that developed Hack, and I'm sitting here with some of the language designers. Happy to answer your questions.
I like the async/await additions. Seems very similar to the .NET implementation. Was this an inspiration?
Re: Hack: a new programming language for HHVM
#28Facebook is always pushing PHP to new places. Would it be too broad to say PHP is the worst thing that ever happened to Facebook's engineering but Facebook's engineering is the best thing that ever happened to PHP?
About the 'new places' - I wonder why they're first abandoning PHP the project and now also PHP the language.
I don't see HHVM that much as a 'different runtime' like Rubinius/JRuby/Topaz or Jython/Unladen Swallow/Pypy - it's more a fork in my book, and Hack adds a lot to that by also greatly changing the language.
This is not a criticism or even positive/negative - this is my point of view.
Re: Hack: a new programming language for HHVM
#29Naming a language hack ... very poor choice. Searching for Go, C, C++ is already bad, now you can add hack to the list.
Hacklang. There, just like go, problem solved.
Re: Hack: a new programming language for HHVM
#30Odd, just two days ago I was remembering a college class where we had to create a new programming language, and I named mine "Hack". The cover of the paper was a copy of K&R only "C" was replaced by "Hack" and of course I was the author.