It’s no secret that I’m into building toy compilers and programming languages. Today I’m introducing something that’s not a toy (I hope). Today, I’m introducing php-compiler (among many other projects). My hope is that these projects will grow from experimental status into fully production ready systems.

Over 1.5 years ago, I introduced PHPPHP to the world. It was the first implementation of the PHP language written in PHP itself. But PHPPHP suffered from a few problems which relegated it to toy status (such as performance). Today, I get to introduce you to another implementation of PHP, written in PHP. But this one is no toy. This one… This one is fun…

One of the most powerful changes that PHP5 brought to the table was the ability to autoload classes. It’s such a useful tool that it was the first standard the FIG group put forth. Almost every single major PHP framework and library uses an autoloader to include its classes. It always felt somewhat wrong to me to autoload in production at runtime. So I decided to give it a bit more exporation…

When it comes to optimization, there are two competing viewpoints in the PHP community. Some say that optimization should only ever be an after thought and to avoid premature optimization at all costs. Others will say that this is impractical, and you should make your application fast as you write it, since then you won’t have to go back and clean it up to make it faster. While I can understand the viewpoints of both sides, I am firmly in the former category. Given the number of discussions that I’ve had as of late on the topic, I’ve decided to write a post as to why I believe my viewpoint is better and more sustainable in the long run.