PHP Next Generation

An anonymous reader writes "The PHP Group has put up a post about the future of PHP. They say, 'Over the last year, some research into the possibility of introducing JIT compilation capabilities to PHP has been conducted. During this research, the realization was made that in order to achieve optimal performance from PHP, some internal API's should be changed. This necessitated the birth of the phpng branch, initially authored by Dmitry Stogov, Xinchen Hui, and Nikita Popov. This branch does not include JIT capabilities, but rather seeks to solve those problems that prohibit the current, and any future implementation of a JIT capable executor achieving optimal performance by improving memory usage and cleaning up some core API's. By making these improvements, the phpng branch gives us a considerable performance gain in real world applications, for example a 20% increase in throughput for Wordpress. The door may well now be open for a JIT capable compiler that can perform as we expect, but it's necessary to say that these changes stand strong on their own, without requiring a JIT capable compiler in the future to validate them.'"

Comments

If PHP was a horse in the prog language race

[Anonymous Coward]

It should have been shot in the paddock.

Mind you at the other end of the spectrum we have the entry from academia "Haskell" that has already completed the course and is back in the stables. Unfortunately they haven't found a way to get it to interact with reality yet as that's an implementation issue.

Feel free to add an analogy to your language pet hate below.

Re:If PHP was a horse in the prog language race

[Anonymous Coward]

My metaphor for describing PHP is just in line with the traditional "tools in a toolbox" one.

Although, a rather big difference with mines is PHP is more like a rotten dusty sandwich you forgot at the bottom under some tools, and you tried to hammer a nail with it.
That is PHP in a nutshell.

Re:If PHP was a horse in the prog language race

[smittyoneeach]

Now, in defense of PHP, I've been trying to compile Yesod, so that I can take it out for a spin. I update cabal, tell it to install, get enough compilation pages scrolling by to make GCC envious, and. . .it crashes.
PHP at least lets me set up a web site and get hacked.

Re:What about PHP on the JVM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's just what the world needs: the rigorous code quality of PHP combined with the high performance and lightweight Java Virtual Machine.

Any chance you could throw some Haskell and M4 macros in there, too?

Re:I got tired of waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

So from slow to slow, i get it now.

Re:I'd rather code COBOL or FORTRAN

[Anonymous Coward]

PHP is great when you need to deliver a working prototype yesterday and someone else will have to maintain the code.

Re:What about PHP on the JVM?

[baldass_newbie]

"Yes, that's just what the world needs: the rigorous code quality of PHP combined with the high performance and lightweight Java Virtual Machine."

Fortunately, I had already swallowed my coffee so the keyboard was safe.
However, your point is valid. Just because you can theoretically run something on something doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Anyway, I need to get back to writing a JVM in VBA. This is going to be the tits.