So, Facebook has released HipHop PHP - a PHP-to-C++ converter. While the name is stupid, the idea is not. 100% of their developers know PHP, I would guess that less than 5% of them are proficient at C++. So, HipHop takes their PHP code, and converts it to compiled C++ – in turn, they get a huge boost in performance and get to keep their existing developers. HipHop is also it’s own webserver too - fun! My first thought was: I wonder what this could mean for Drupal? Well, David Struass, a maintainer of Pressflow (a set of patches for Drupal performance and scalability) put up a blog post about what it would take for Pressflow and Drupal to become HipHop-friendly. Exciting times!
NOTE: This post was written before the migration of this blog to a new format. If anything in this post doesn't look formatted right, please leave a comment and I'll get it fixed up.