Probability

PHP founder backs Facebook's HipHop technology

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is dominant in the realm of server-side Web application development: It's used on more than 81 percent of websites using server-side languages, according to W3Techs.com, which gathers data about the use of Web technologies. The language's creator, Rasmus Lerdorf, recently appeared at the DevBeat conference in San Francisco, where he gave a thumbs-up to Facebook's HipHop source code transformer for PHP. "If they get it general-purpose enough, maybe eventually that could become the next engine for PHP," he said. Having a JIT (just-in-time compiler) like the HipHop VM in PHP "is certainly a possibility, and yes, I do like what these guys are doing. But it isn't something that is close. It would be a couple years out at least still." Another variety of JIT technology also might wind up in PHP, he said.

Lerdorf, a distinguished engineer at e-commerce vendor Etsy, also told the audience that if he could change one fundamental thing about the way he developed PHP, it would have been to straighten out case sensitivity (PHP functions are not case-sensitive today). "I should have changed it earlier, but it seemed like a very trivial thing." Lerdorf also doubted PHP would ever become a strictly typed language. This would be a "huge, huge change," he said. "I don't think it will ever happen." Afterward, Lerdorf, who is still active in the development of PHP, fielded questions from InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill.