PHP is a language a bunch of people are familiar with-- and a "first language" for a lot of people. This could mean a great deal to some of those kids who started out as "Drupal Developers" and never expanded their skills past the platform.
It's as far as I know the first reboot of an existing language :)
The idea is to keep the spirit of PHP but change its syntax
to natively support XML, SQL, JSON, XPath/XQuery, Perl5 regex, etc.
Embedding those DSL provides several benefits:
- better readability
- variable values are correctly escaped by default (no SQL injection, etc)
- integration into a common runtime type system which avoid runtime conversions
Unlike PHP wich is based on C runtime, PHP.reboot is based on the JVM which natively supports unicode, exceptions and provides a runtime optimizing environment.
PHP.reboot uses a gradual type system (not yet finished) and will soon get a runtime compiler thanks to JSR 292 API. The interpreter already use this API to speed up method calls and member access.
> It's as far as I know the first reboot of an existing language :)
What an absolute nonsense. As if nobody has ever re-implemented a language that already existed, it's maybe a first for PHP but it's more the rule than the exception that there are dialects of programming languages.
Can you provide examples? Besides Lisp (which isn't considered "a language" so much as a taxonomical classification to them), what language has 2+ dialects where both are in active development and use? (Not to suggest JPHP is in active use.)
I think the only good example I can come up with is Visual Basic vs. Visual Basic for Applicaions.
