7 ms·

I don't think there are enough backend web developers in the world to support vibrant communities for both PHP and Hack. Unless Facebook's prepared to invest a

by muglug 8y ago

I don't think there are enough backend web developers in the world to support vibrant communities for both PHP and Hack. Unless Facebook's prepared to invest a lot in community-building, Hack and similar FB projects will go the way of VBScript and Silverlight.

iodiniemetra 8y ago
hack is going to become incredibly widespread before slowly dying off due to market forces?
- arcticbull 8y ago
  You could argue that it already did become incredibly widespread (as php) then died off slowly due to market forces.
  - CleanShirt 8y ago
    I wouldn’t say Hack was ever popular as a language. The HHVM certainly had popularity as a runtime for PHP until the speed increase of PHP7.
- elaus 8y ago
  I seriously can't remember any (incredibly) widespread use of Silverlight – could you elaborate? The only instance I noticed it was with a video streaming platform.
  - hiram112 8y ago
    I don't think Silverlight had a mass amount of public use (Flash and Applets were still available at the time - so there was no pressing need). But MS really did earn a lot of bad will from their dev community who had been pushed to learn yet another framework which ended up dead. I rarely even use my PC anymore. I basically then it on once a month to download the gigs of updates. It's interesting that Silverlight still listed at the top of optional updates. There must be a few businesses and schools who bought into the hype and built their internal app on SL.
    - gpvos 8y ago
      My previous employer sells a legal review & production solution with a Silverlight UI. I left half a year ago, but if all is well they have just finished reimplementing it in Angular.
  - krylon 8y ago
    The management console of the AV software we use at work is built in Silverlight, but that is about the only instance of Silverlight I have ever seen.
  - jrs95 8y ago
    Biggest use of it that I'm aware of was Netflix. This was really just done for DRM reasons.
  - oh-kumudo 8y ago
    Silverlight is used simply because MSFT grant the use of their DRM license, unlike Adobe at the time.
paxys 8y ago
HHVM will stick around simply because Facebook has the resources to maintain it by themselves for only themselves indefinitely if they need to. Agree about the "vibrant communities" part though.
- ItsMe000001 8y ago
  As a heavy React Native and Flow user for years, the disadvantage of projects such as those is that they actually are pure and true open source Github projects in the original meaning: The owner produces something for themselves and then shares it. What is the disadvantage then? Well, it is not a product, meaning the external users are not the main target of the project. The project owners have no incentive to implement anything they don't need themselves, or to fix any bugs that don't impact their own developers. It works fine if your own needs happen to be as close as possible to the ones of the project owner, if you patch stuff you need yourself, and if you don't expect anything from the owner in general. Especially when I compare Flow and TypeScript (I use the first quite heavily, the second occasionally, filed lots of bug reports for both) the difference between them is quite substantial. For TS Anders Hejlsberg himself answers bug reports, and they listen to what the community wants. In the Flow issues you'll find Facebook employees - but not the actual owners (or if there is one they remain hidden). If the Flow team implements something Github users ask for it's almost always only because the need for it happened to also developed inside Facebook. I have learned the hard way that "open source" is not sufficient, it should actually also be a product (meaning the owner cares a lot about external opinions). That's most important for things like core libraries and tools like those add-on Javascript type systems, not so important for "leaf node" dependencies in your project, like a library that does something specialized.
  - linkmotif 8y ago
    > (meaning the owner cares a lot about external opinions). I actually like this about FBOS. I’ve found that I appreciate their vision and direction on the projects I use (React particularly, I love their stewardship there, but also Relay, where yeah issues and suggestions are ignored but that’s fine because I like what the team does and the slow pace). I appreciate that they’re not pulled this way and that way by the community and its whims. That’s why I don’t dig Apollo for example, which seems to be one of these community projects that almost exists more for the community than for the product and tries to be everything to everyone and in the end is not something I appreciate technically or even as a community. Of course Relay docs suck but hey it’s open source! I’d rather use a really strong product like Relay than a weaker product like Apollo, even if it means having to learn some internals.
erikb 8y ago
The thing is that the enterprises seem to be okay with them being the only user of their open source projects. Don't ask me why they then decide to do open source projects in the first place, but that's what I'm seeing.
- skybrian 8y ago
  I don't know about Hack specifically, but sometimes it's a dependency of some other open source project. There's little point in open sourcing code written in Hack if the underlying tools aren't available for everyone to use.
- PunchTornado 8y ago
  A lot of other big players used Hack (Etsy, Wikipedia and others). Don't know if they switched back to PHP7 though.
  - beberlei 8y ago
    Afaik Etsy and Wikipedia only used HHVM for the performance win and not the Hack language on top. Since Wikipedias tech stack "MediaWIki" is heavily used by PHP companies it can't be using Hack features. Slack came out with a blog post a few month ago, writing that they use the Hack features on top of HHVM. That is the only one besides Facebook that I know of (there are probably more) Edit: Source for Etsy using PHP 7 now https://speakerdeck.com/wcgallego/hitting-the-turbo-button-upgrading-to-php-7-at-etsy-1 https://speakerdeck.com/wcgallego/hitting-the-turbo-button-u...
  - gyaru 8y ago
    Hack is going to be deprecated when it comes to MediaWiki, they're recommending PHP7. "MediaWiki 1.31 requires PHP 7.0.0 or later. Although HHVM 3.18.5 or later is supported, it is generally advised to use PHP 7.0.0 or later for long term support. "
- adzicg 8y ago
  I had a client with a proprietary programming language for data warehouse management, they had a very hard time hiring people who wanted to work on that stack from a career progression perspective. I imagine, at that scale, that opensourcing is a big win because you can have a proprietary stack, but still hire people that already know it, or won't be reluctant to invest a few years of their life into working on it. You also don't have to pay as much for educating new hires as you would for a totally closed proprietary stack, and new people faster become productive. Hiring contractors that work with that stack on a short notice also becomes easier. For a large co, these kinds of benefits might be more than enough to justify cleaning up the code enough to opensource it.
cptskippy 8y ago
> will go the way of VBScript and Silverlight. So it will either die off quickly or be extremely popular and stick around for 20+ years? VBScript is just as old as PHP and was the primary scripting language on Microsoft products for a solid decade. It was in everything from Office to IIS and still ships with every copy of Windows. Silverlight is just a framework and was only in active development for 5 or 6 years before being killed off.
- floatboth 8y ago
  Isn't VB for Applications (Office) a different thing than VBScript?
  - folkrav 8y ago
    VBScript is a subset of VBA IIRC
    - cptskippy 8y ago
      Sorta but not really. You can write a single piece of code that's valid C, C++, C#, and Java but that doesn't make them the same language or subsets of one another. VBScript started out using the same conventions as VB and a subset of the syntax but it was never really related to it beyond that. There are different flavors of VBScript as well. CScript is a console variant, WScript for window environments, and ASP for IIS Web Development. They're mostly compatible but not entirely. When classes were introduced, they weren't immediately available across all the variations and still aren't IIRC. It's all very confusing though ultimately I don't think that it contributed to the negative connotations about it. Being associated with VB was ultimately what tainted it.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    Those are two different things. VBScript was the Macro language used in Office Products. There is also an SDK for VB/VB.NET for developing plug-ins and other tools that's completely different.

by muglug 8y ago

iodiniemetra 8y ago

hack is going to become incredibly widespread before slowly dying off due to market forces?

arcticbull 8y ago
You could argue that it already did become incredibly widespread (as php) then died off slowly due to market forces.
- CleanShirt 8y ago
  I wouldn’t say Hack was ever popular as a language. The HHVM certainly had popularity as a runtime for PHP until the speed increase of PHP7.
elaus 8y ago
I seriously can't remember any (incredibly) widespread use of Silverlight – could you elaborate? The only instance I noticed it was with a video streaming platform.
- hiram112 8y ago
  I don't think Silverlight had a mass amount of public use (Flash and Applets were still available at the time - so there was no pressing need). But MS really did earn a lot of bad will from their dev community who had been pushed to learn yet another framework which ended up dead. I rarely even use my PC anymore. I basically then it on once a month to download the gigs of updates. It's interesting that Silverlight still listed at the top of optional updates. There must be a few businesses and schools who bought into the hype and built their internal app on SL.
  - gpvos 8y ago
    My previous employer sells a legal review & production solution with a Silverlight UI. I left half a year ago, but if all is well they have just finished reimplementing it in Angular.
- krylon 8y ago
  The management console of the AV software we use at work is built in Silverlight, but that is about the only instance of Silverlight I have ever seen.
- jrs95 8y ago
  Biggest use of it that I'm aware of was Netflix. This was really just done for DRM reasons.
- oh-kumudo 8y ago
  Silverlight is used simply because MSFT grant the use of their DRM license, unlike Adobe at the time.

paxys 8y ago

HHVM will stick around simply because Facebook has the resources to maintain it by themselves for only themselves indefinitely if they need to. Agree about the "vibrant communities" part though.

ItsMe000001 8y ago
As a heavy React Native and Flow user for years, the disadvantage of projects such as those is that they actually are pure and true open source Github projects in the original meaning: The owner produces something for themselves and then shares it. What is the disadvantage then? Well, it is not a product, meaning the external users are not the main target of the project. The project owners have no incentive to implement anything they don't need themselves, or to fix any bugs that don't impact their own developers. It works fine if your own needs happen to be as close as possible to the ones of the project owner, if you patch stuff you need yourself, and if you don't expect anything from the owner in general. Especially when I compare Flow and TypeScript (I use the first quite heavily, the second occasionally, filed lots of bug reports for both) the difference between them is quite substantial. For TS Anders Hejlsberg himself answers bug reports, and they listen to what the community wants. In the Flow issues you'll find Facebook employees - but not the actual owners (or if there is one they remain hidden). If the Flow team implements something Github users ask for it's almost always only because the need for it happened to also developed inside Facebook. I have learned the hard way that "open source" is not sufficient, it should actually also be a product (meaning the owner cares a lot about external opinions). That's most important for things like core libraries and tools like those add-on Javascript type systems, not so important for "leaf node" dependencies in your project, like a library that does something specialized.
- linkmotif 8y ago
  > (meaning the owner cares a lot about external opinions). I actually like this about FBOS. I’ve found that I appreciate their vision and direction on the projects I use (React particularly, I love their stewardship there, but also Relay, where yeah issues and suggestions are ignored but that’s fine because I like what the team does and the slow pace). I appreciate that they’re not pulled this way and that way by the community and its whims. That’s why I don’t dig Apollo for example, which seems to be one of these community projects that almost exists more for the community than for the product and tries to be everything to everyone and in the end is not something I appreciate technically or even as a community. Of course Relay docs suck but hey it’s open source! I’d rather use a really strong product like Relay than a weaker product like Apollo, even if it means having to learn some internals.

erikb 8y ago

The thing is that the enterprises seem to be okay with them being the only user of their open source projects. Don't ask me why they then decide to do open source projects in the first place, but that's what I'm seeing.

skybrian 8y ago
I don't know about Hack specifically, but sometimes it's a dependency of some other open source project. There's little point in open sourcing code written in Hack if the underlying tools aren't available for everyone to use.
PunchTornado 8y ago
A lot of other big players used Hack (Etsy, Wikipedia and others). Don't know if they switched back to PHP7 though.
- beberlei 8y ago
  Afaik Etsy and Wikipedia only used HHVM for the performance win and not the Hack language on top. Since Wikipedias tech stack "MediaWIki" is heavily used by PHP companies it can't be using Hack features. Slack came out with a blog post a few month ago, writing that they use the Hack features on top of HHVM. That is the only one besides Facebook that I know of (there are probably more) Edit: Source for Etsy using PHP 7 now https://speakerdeck.com/wcgallego/hitting-the-turbo-button-upgrading-to-php-7-at-etsy-1 https://speakerdeck.com/wcgallego/hitting-the-turbo-button-u...
- gyaru 8y ago
  Hack is going to be deprecated when it comes to MediaWiki, they're recommending PHP7. "MediaWiki 1.31 requires PHP 7.0.0 or later. Although HHVM 3.18.5 or later is supported, it is generally advised to use PHP 7.0.0 or later for long term support. "
adzicg 8y ago
I had a client with a proprietary programming language for data warehouse management, they had a very hard time hiring people who wanted to work on that stack from a career progression perspective. I imagine, at that scale, that opensourcing is a big win because you can have a proprietary stack, but still hire people that already know it, or won't be reluctant to invest a few years of their life into working on it. You also don't have to pay as much for educating new hires as you would for a totally closed proprietary stack, and new people faster become productive. Hiring contractors that work with that stack on a short notice also becomes easier. For a large co, these kinds of benefits might be more than enough to justify cleaning up the code enough to opensource it.

cptskippy 8y ago

> will go the way of VBScript and Silverlight. So it will either die off quickly or be extremely popular and stick around for 20+ years? VBScript is just as old as PHP and was the primary scripting language on Microsoft products for a solid decade. It was in everything from Office to IIS and still ships with every copy of Windows. Silverlight is just a framework and was only in active development for 5 or 6 years before being killed off.

floatboth 8y ago
Isn't VB for Applications (Office) a different thing than VBScript?
- folkrav 8y ago
  VBScript is a subset of VBA IIRC
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    Sorta but not really. You can write a single piece of code that's valid C, C++, C#, and Java but that doesn't make them the same language or subsets of one another. VBScript started out using the same conventions as VB and a subset of the syntax but it was never really related to it beyond that. There are different flavors of VBScript as well. CScript is a console variant, WScript for window environments, and ASP for IIS Web Development. They're mostly compatible but not entirely. When classes were introduced, they weren't immediately available across all the variations and still aren't IIRC. It's all very confusing though ultimately I don't think that it contributed to the negative connotations about it. Being associated with VB was ultimately what tainted it.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  Those are two different things. VBScript was the Macro language used in Office Products. There is also an SDK for VB/VB.NET for developing plug-ins and other tools that's completely different.