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posted by janrinok on Friday March 21 2014, @11:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the another-day-another-language dept.

youngatheart writes:

"First there was HipHop, the PHP interpreter which improved performance, now usually referred to by the less embarrassing name HHVM. Building on HHVM, they've just introduced Hack, which 'reconciles the fast development cycle of PHP with the discipline provided by static typing, while adding many features commonly found in other modern programming languages.'

Over the past year, Facebook has converted nearly all of its PHP code base to Hack, which makes up the core of its website."

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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by crutchy on Friday March 21 2014, @11:58PM

    by crutchy (179) on Friday March 21 2014, @11:58PM (#19534) Homepage Journal

    ...php still sucks though, right?

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by davester666 on Saturday March 22 2014, @12:43AM

      by davester666 (155) on Saturday March 22 2014, @12:43AM (#19549)

      This is taking a really crappy language and making it slightly less crappy. And then giving it a name with a negative public perception.

      Imagine as an independent contractor going to a client and saying "I plan on doing your project in a language called Hack. It's by Facebook."

      • (Score: 2) by chromas on Saturday March 22 2014, @01:10AM

        by chromas (34) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 22 2014, @01:10AM (#19554) Journal

        You're right. Leave out the part about Facebook.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by tibman on Saturday March 22 2014, @01:58AM

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 22 2014, @01:58AM (#19563)

      I still develop in PHP for fun. C# for work and C++ only occasionally. Javascript is likely to dominate in the next year or two. It's already almost tied with server-side code.

      PHP will always have a bad reputation. Even from those who never took the time to learn it. Languages don't bother me but bad code certainly does. Poorly named variables and functions are possible in any language. Writing code without tests feels unprofessional. Methods with more than four or five lines in them look too busy. Functions that are both a command and query make me shiver. A collection of functions passing the same objects around is just a class in disguise. Presentation layers that have any database knowledge are cringe worthy. High level code should not depend on low level details. Long predicates should be made into boolean methods. Blah blah blah. The language doesn't mean shit. It's up to the person using it that determines how accurate/stable/fast/reusable it is : )

      --
      SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by rts008 on Saturday March 22 2014, @09:56AM

        by rts008 (3001) on Saturday March 22 2014, @09:56AM (#19652)

        I've dabbled with html, a little Java, and a little python scripting, but I really do not know coding, programming, or any 'language'(I focus on some game 'modding' only)

        Coming from a 'country/farm boy' background, blacksmithing, construction, and other blue-collar vocations, I see your post and react to it in that mindset.

        To set the stage, coder/programmer/developer are fellow craftsman in my view, so keep that in mind for the below statements:

        The language doesn't mean shit. It's up to the person using it that determines how accurate/stable/fast/reusable it is : )

        The 'world's best, Super Ultimate, Foolproof, comprehensive' toolkit wielded by an incompetent or mediocre craftsman(?) will not achieve 'master craftsman' level results.
        However, you can provide some basic tools to a true master craftsman, and they will achieve seemingly miraculous works.

        I've personally witnessed this time, and time again in the construction field, and on the various farms and ranches I have worked; never more so than when I was in the US Army.

        So yeah, you hit the nail on the head, from my POV.

    • (Score: 1) by Barbara Celarent on Saturday March 22 2014, @03:05PM

      by Barbara Celarent (790) on Saturday March 22 2014, @03:05PM (#19710)

      Yes, Yes it does.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 03 2014, @08:47PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 03 2014, @08:47PM (#39320)

      c8CDmA nncedifvcypt [nncedifvcypt.com], [url=http://dcpgibqknjsy.com/]dcpgibqknjsy[/url], [link=http://vaplxyjknosg.com/]vaplxyjknosg[/link] , http://umicicgihstp.com/ [umicicgihstp.com]

  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 22 2014, @12:20AM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday March 22 2014, @12:20AM (#19544) Homepage

    Zuck named the language "hack" as a reference more condescending to his users rather than himself, for he was merely an unimaginative hack who got lucky doing what was already done many times over and people around the planet are still salivating over giving them all their data.

    Metallica named their sellout album* "Load," because they knew it was a load of shit and that the customers would buy it anyway. Feeling enterprising, they expanded one mediocre album into two albums' worth and named the second "Re-load," because of course it was also a load of shit spawned from a load of shit.

    * Friday diversion incoming: The hardcore among Metallica fans may argue that they sold out at the Black album or even Justice. The evidence suggests that the Black album was in fact they point at which they sold out, with a fairly complicated inside joke on Don't Tread on Me. As proof, first listen to the melody of the lead guitars which kick in at around 5 seconds of Don't Tread on Me. [youtube.com] Next, listen to this skipped-for-your-pleasure clip of where they got that riff from**. [youtube.com] And no, it wasn't some Revolutionary War-era bugle riff. Other inside jokes in music include the famous riff of Sweet Child o' Mine which the band laughed at when the first heard. Yet another example are the lyrics to the Police' Every Breath You Take which was another joke turned into a song.

    ** No joke, that movie was introduced to me in grade school by a Jewish teacher who wanted to show us at an early age that it's okay for everybody but White people to use racial slurs.

    • (Score: 1) by black6host on Saturday March 22 2014, @02:49AM

      by black6host (3827) on Saturday March 22 2014, @02:49AM (#19574) Journal

      What kind of class was that. An opinionated, and tenured, professor at a university? Yeah, I could see that. Grade school? That type of stuff should be taught at home.

      I'll raise my boy to be respectful of all. They can teach him geography, math, reading and writing, etc.

    • (Score: 1) by TheloniousToady on Saturday March 22 2014, @04:36AM

      by TheloniousToady (820) on Saturday March 22 2014, @04:36AM (#19612)
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @06:28AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @06:28AM (#19625)

        I've often wondered what a language designed by Linus would look like.

        I guess we'll never know, though - he seems to be perfectly content with C - and he's an OS guy, not a compiler guy. :-P

        • (Score: 1) by TheloniousToady on Saturday March 22 2014, @02:17PM

          by TheloniousToady (820) on Saturday March 22 2014, @02:17PM (#19699)

          If Linus is content with C, I think he's right. To me, it's the only nearly perfect language, as judged by how well it does what it's trying to do. In other words, there isn't anything substantial that can be improved in C without it becoming a different language.

          Other languages certainly have their purpose and place because they try to do different things. For example, Python is extremely good at what it does. But no language can ever be better at doing C stuff than C itself. Compare that to C++, which has its merits, but is far from perfect in terms of how well it does what it's trying to do.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @03:22PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @03:22PM (#19712)

            In other words, there isn't anything substantial that can be improved in C without it becoming a different language.

            A native string type would be nice. I love C, I enjoyed learning it, but I was astounded by the gyrations (library functions, etc.) you have to go to to use strings compared to the BASIC I had previously learned. C's unfriendliness to text manipulation is one of the reasons I switched to Perl when I got into CGI Web programming in 2000.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @11:46AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @11:46AM (#19667)

      How does playing 8 bars from Bernstein "prove" that a band has sold out? Had The Nice sold out when they played the whole piece? Why should hints of socio-political commentary be considered selling out? If that's the case, then most punk bands sold out before they sold anything.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @10:17AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @10:17AM (#19655)

    Choose your flavor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Faceboo k [wikipedia.org]