Announcing a specification for PHP

#1

Post by keso » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 6:40 PM UTC

Announcing a specification for PHP
hhvm.com

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#2

Post by LBarret » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 6:50 PM UTC

A language without a spec ? Damn, php is even worse than I thought. Still, FB may turn it (with hack and HMMV) into something interesting.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#3

Post by spacemanmatt » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 6:57 PM UTC

What's it been, 20 years?

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#4

Post by Aldo_MX » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 6:59 PM UTC

As a discussion of any programming language grows longer, the probability of a bashing against such language approaches 1.

Any similarity with Godwin's law is mere coincidence.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#5

Post by jaredmcateer » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 6:59 PM UTC

spacemanmatt wrote: post #3

What's it been, 20 years?

If you read the article you would have known this. It is literally the first three sentences they cover this.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#6

Post by masklinn » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 7:00 PM UTC

LBarret wrote: post #2

A language without a spec ? Damn, php is even worse than I thought. Still, FB may turn it (with hack and HMMV) into something interesting.

That's not uncommon for implementation-defined languages. Ruby didn't have a language specification until the community set up rubyspec as it started getting serious about alternative implementations.

Facebook is apparently getting serious about its own alternative implementation (or at least intending to be taken seriously) and are thus stepping in with a spec.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#7

Post by krapp » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 7:02 PM UTC

Aldo_MX wrote: post #4

As a discussion of any programming language grows longer, the probability of a bashing against such language approaches 1. Any similarity with Godwin's law is mere coincidence.

There are languages that everybody hates, and then there are the languages nobody uses.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#8

Post by peterevans » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 7:05 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #7

Aldo_MX wrote: post #4

As a discussion of any programming language grows longer, the probability of a bashing against such language approaches 1. Any similarity with Godwin's law is mere coincidence.

There are languages that everybody hates, and then there are the languages nobody uses.

This is sadly true, on so, so many levels...

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#9

Post by baq » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 7:05 PM UTC

jaredmcateer wrote: post #5

spacemanmatt wrote: post #3

What's it been, 20 years?

If you read the article you would have known this. It is literally the first three sentences they cover this.

smartass, meet smartass.

Re: Announcing a specification for PHP

#10

Post by birkbork » Wed, Jul 30, 2014, 7:13 PM UTC

This is great news for the PHP community, and I for one applaud their effort. Contrary to what many HN hipsters seems to believe, PHP is quite a capable language, and HHVM / Hack is really pushing things forward.

* Hack introduces type hinting, imo the major lacking part in PHP.

* HHVM introduces speed to php. On a personal project calculating perlin noise, I got about 8x speedup on HHVM.

* The specification helps pave the way for more implementations of PHP.