Facebook releases a new programming language, Hack

Facebook has just released a new programming language named Hack, that will allow programmers to write code faster with less errors. It is an open-source language facilitating developers to write and deliver bug-free code quickly.

Hack programming language combines the elements of static-type programming languages such as C with dynamic programming languages like PHP.

From the Facebook blog post: “Hack reconciles the fast development cycle of PHP with the discipline provided by static typing, while adding many features commonly found in other modern programming languages.

We have deployed Hack at Facebook and it has been a great success. Over the last year, we have migrated nearly our entire PHP codebase to Hack, thanks to both organic adoption and a number of homegrown refactoring tools.We’re also proud to release an open source version of Hack to the public at http://hacklang.org/ as part of our HHVM runtime platform, which will now support both Hack and PHP.”

“Traditionally, dynamically typed languages allow for rapid development but sacrifice the ability to catch errors early and introspect code quickly, particularly on larger codebases. Conversely, statically typed languages provide more of a safety net, but often at the cost of quick iteration. We believed there had to be a sweet spot.”

According to Facebook, PHP developers that are using HHVM need not to worry about Facebook abandoning PHP as Facebook engineer said “HHVM is now a runtime that supports both PHP and Hack, so you can start to take advantage of Hack’s new features incrementally.”