[kingkilr]

At this point I have to just laugh. They literally already paid for the development of a prototype for a faster PHP, and decided not to pursue that route: http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2012/07/hello-everyone.html. I have to assume they have some insane internal politics, because there's no sane technical reason to develop HipHop (static subset-of-php to C++ compiler), then start the HipHop VM, then fund the PHP on PyPy prototype, and now apparently move to a PHP on the JVM.

[theshadow]

I don't understand what's wrong with exploring your options. Why would you assume that the reasoning has something to do with politics rather than trying to find a better technical solution to their problem?

[kingkilr]

They're not exploring a research space, they're exploring a space where the options are incredibly well known, and they're jumping from solution to solution, even after they appear to find a success.

[sanxiyn]

If they have enough resources, they can afford to try all options in parallel. Wasteful, but although it may seem strange, it isn't like programming language implementation engineering is expensive compared to data centers.

[lparry]

yeah, god forbid they feel that their initial success could be improved upon; They should put down their tools as soon as they get their first version that works

/sarcasm

[apgwoz]

I'm not sure why you'd laugh. Facebook is investigating a bunch of different options which may or may not yield fruit.

[momotomo]

Standard feasibility work for any large project? Alternately the potential that all of their explorations have application in a stack somewhere in the organisation? At any rate testing and validating / invalidating alternatives is time well spent if you have the engineering capacity.