Dominique Stender Good software is only the beginning

Thoughts on HipHop for PHP

It has been almost two weeks now since Facebook announced HipHop for PHP. The source code is still not available because apparently they've ran into some compilation issues, according to their GitHub status. So in essence, not much is known about HipHop for PHP but I want to try to give my thoughts based on the small amount of information we have and my experience with similar technologies.

Please note that the bits and pieces of information come from various sources and things may or may not be exactly as we think they are.

In order to understand what HipHop for PHP does it is important to understand how PHP itself gets executed. In this article I will give a rough overview of the PHP execution process and make a few educated guesses in what aspect HipHop for PHP differs from there.

Based on the little information available online I'll discuss how HipHop for PHP is suitable for large businesses and what might turn out to be obstacles that are yet to remove.