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Aside from the interesting technical details, the interesting part of this article is how much difference a brand name makes. He had difficulty getting people i

Aside from the interesting technical details, the interesting part of this article is how much difference a brand name makes. He had difficulty getting people interested in PHP compilers, then Facebook announces one, and it's the new hotness. This is a problem many startups have. Because people use brands as a shortcut to determine whether something is of sufficient quality to be worth taking the time to investigate, being a new unknown is a bit of a hurdle to overcome.

gritzko 17y ago
Well, I understand that completely. People trust brands. That is just a cognitive shortcut. That's why we have marketing.
jcoby 17y ago
it's not really so much a brand name as just getting the concept out there. php developers don't realize that there are option when it comes to the runtime. i would guess that the majority of them wouldn't even know to look for phpc or any alternative. there just hasn't been any news of something like HPHP before HPHP. if you want to run php, you go to php.net or install it from a package and go from there. combine the above with very little actual need, very little public information on how to build a large site, and lack of maintainer interest and phpc just won't get major traction. I would have loved to have found phpc several years ago when i was still working on a large site that had performance problems.
- robryan 17y ago
  It wouldn't really surprise me if a lot of the people freelancing in PHP wouldn't know enough about the interpreter so see any advantage in compiled code.
  - jcoby 17y ago
    a freelancer wouldn't know and if they did they wouldn't care. (i am a freelancer.) we're talking about websites that are in the top 5% of all sites (by traffic) that would even need to think about using something like phpc or hphp. the number of those that would be willing to use a freelancer to handle their scaling issues are probably in the single digits at best.
    - pbiggar 17y ago
      On a tangent, I wonder why lots of people call it something other than "phc". I said phc a lot, its on the website as phc, but I've heard phpc, phpcompiler, and tons of variations. I'm curious why.
xsmasher 17y ago
This is not just branding, but considering future prospects. No one wants to adopt a library and then have the project go dead. What should I use jQuery and not some other .js library? Because I know jQuery will still be there in a year.
_delirium 17y ago
In this case I think having a built-in "and it worked" story helped a lot too. HPHP was released after already having a deployment that actually worked in the real world and saved resources/money, so it didn't have to go through the usual, "why should anyone care about a PHP compiler?" skepticism.

gritzko 17y ago

Well, I understand that completely. People trust brands. That is just a cognitive shortcut. That's why we have marketing.

jcoby 17y ago

it's not really so much a brand name as just getting the concept out there. php developers don't realize that there are option when it comes to the runtime. i would guess that the majority of them wouldn't even know to look for phpc or any alternative. there just hasn't been any news of something like HPHP before HPHP. if you want to run php, you go to php.net or install it from a package and go from there. combine the above with very little actual need, very little public information on how to build a large site, and lack of maintainer interest and phpc just won't get major traction. I would have loved to have found phpc several years ago when i was still working on a large site that had performance problems.

robryan 17y ago
It wouldn't really surprise me if a lot of the people freelancing in PHP wouldn't know enough about the interpreter so see any advantage in compiled code.
- jcoby 17y ago
  a freelancer wouldn't know and if they did they wouldn't care. (i am a freelancer.) we're talking about websites that are in the top 5% of all sites (by traffic) that would even need to think about using something like phpc or hphp. the number of those that would be willing to use a freelancer to handle their scaling issues are probably in the single digits at best.
  - pbiggar 17y ago
    On a tangent, I wonder why lots of people call it something other than "phc". I said phc a lot, its on the website as phc, but I've heard phpc, phpcompiler, and tons of variations. I'm curious why.

xsmasher 17y ago

This is not just branding, but considering future prospects. No one wants to adopt a library and then have the project go dead. What should I use jQuery and not some other .js library? Because I know jQuery will still be there in a year.

_delirium 17y ago

In this case I think having a built-in "and it worked" story helped a lot too. HPHP was released after already having a deployment that actually worked in the real world and saved resources/money, so it didn't have to go through the usual, "why should anyone care about a PHP compiler?" skepticism.