Hack: A New Programming Language Invented by Facebook

Hack is a programming language for the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM) invented
by Facebook. It was introduced on March 20, 2014. Before the announcement of the
new programming language, Facebook had already implemented the code and tested
it on a large portion of Facebook’s site. Over the last year, they have
migrated their entire PHP codebase to Hack.
Hack has deep roots in PHP. In fact, most PHP files are
already valid Hack files. Many new features are added to it that helps make
developers more productive. The language is open source.
Hack: A New Programming Language Invented by Facebook
Hack can be seen as a new version of PHP that also runs on
the HHVM, but it allows programmers to use both dynamic typing and static
typing. This is what is called gradual typing, which has been mostly seen as an
academic exercise; as described by Facebook, it is the first to bring gradual
typing to a “real, industrial strength” language.
An open source version of Hack is released to the public at
http://hacklang.org/ as part of HHVM runtime platform, which will now support
both Hack and PHP.

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