Facebook's HipHop Also a PHP Webserver

darthcamaro writes "As expected, Facebook today announced a new runtime for PHP, called HipHop. What wasn't expected were a few key revelations disclosed today by Facebook developer David Recordan. As it turns out, Facebook has been running HipHop for months and it now powers 90 percent of their servers — it's not a skunkworks project; it's a Live production technology. It's also not just a runtime, it's also a new webserver. 'In general, Apache is a great Web server, but when we were looking at how we get the next half percent or percent of performance, we didn't need all the features that Apache offers," Recordon said. He added, however, that he hopes an open source project will one day emerge around making HipHop work with Apache Web servers.'"

Well, I Guess "HipHop" Is the New Champ!

[RobotRunAmok]

And here I never thought that anything could ever take the award for "Most Stupidly Named Software" away from the Ubuntu distros.

Congrats again, HipHop! Can I get a Fist-Bump?!

Re:Well, I Guess "HipHop" Is the New Champ!

[Anonymous Coward]

I made the mistake of installing HipHop. I should have known something was wrong when the server started wearing pants hanging down so low that its anus was sticking out. Then eventually the thing ran away and now spends its time at the local Popeye's and makes money stealing people's hubcaps.

Ah ha!

[bernywork]

This explains a lot, a couple - few months ago, I started getting complaints about "potentially virus infected" / "unscanable" zip files when being served content from facebook.com and fbcdn.net etc.

They probably changed at this point how they were sending data out of the web server with zip compression and it all started falling over at this point....

I was wondering what the change was....

Facebook Still Runs Terribly Slow

[ztransform]

Chat routinely freezes up the browser, and people appear offline when they are online.

I frequently get error messages from pages that won't dynamically load (there is something wrong with the server, or such message).

Facebook doesn't need a half percent increase in performance, they need a lot more!

Re:GUI applications

[shutdown -p now]

PHP is really nice and fast to write. *ducks from the c/c++ coders*

You should duck from Python and Ruby coders. The C++ guys are too busy beating up Java schmucks. ~

Re:GUI applications

[FooAtWFU]

I prefer php because it's a nice compromise between being easy to read, and being easy to find code to copy.

Congratulations. You have just explained half the code snippets on The Daily WTF [thedailywtf.com].

Do you use the for-case [thedailywtf.com] paradigm too?

From TFA...

[BitHive]

As a programming language, PHP is simple. Simple to learn, simple to write, simple to read, and simple to debug. We are able to get new engineers ramped up at Facebook a lot faster with PHP than with other languages, which allows us to innovate faster.

hahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahahahhahahah

Re:Well, I Guess "HipHop" Is the New Champ!

[Anonymous Coward]

My friend, if someone's anus is sticking out, they have far more problems than oversized pants!

Re:GUI applications

[MightyMartian]

What makes PHP nice is that it is so close to C. For people who are comfortable working in C, PHP is just a few dollar signs away.

Which is like saying an anus is almost like a vagina...

Feel free to take that analogy the distance.

Re:Well, I Guess "HipHop" Is the New Champ!

[Nerdfest]

It sucks. To compile, it makes you hold you mouse sideways ... gangsta style.