[acomjean]

This is true. But HHVM lit a fire under the php devs to get php7 out the door with significant performance improvements. (php6 never saw the light of day). Php has improved so much with the 7x releases.

[tgtweak]

Php7 is pretty damn fast with apc cache and some tuning. Not to mention it doesn't have any of the silly restrictions that hhvm had.