Hack programming language
Hacker ApprovedRanked 58 of 163 programming languages by recommenders
Free PHP-derived language from Meta with a more expressive type system and async support. Critics say it adds another standard with its own problems.
Free PHP-derived language from Meta with a more expressive type system and async support. Critics say it adds another standard with its own problems.
35 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 26
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 74%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 26 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Improves on PHP's flaws
“They already did one better and upgraded the whole language in the form of Hack.”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “PHP Foundation 'under-funded' with one full-time staff member, director says” “IMO Hack is much better than PHP, I'm sad that it never gained traction”
Comment from 9 May 2026 in “CPanel's Black Week: 3 New Vulnerabilities Patched After Attack on 44k Servers” “Hack was the better language for so many reasons”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “PHP is Dead (and AI is to blame)” - Comment from 23 May 2026 in “PHP's Oddities”
Expressive type system beats PHP
“Hack has a really expressive type system where PHP does not.”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Was It Really a Billion Dollar Mistake?” “Hack has a really expressive type system where PHP does not”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Was It Really a Billion Dollar Mistake?” Fans call it brilliant and better
“Hack is also brilliant. Thanks for your work and continued maintaining it.”
Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “Why doesn't HN have a mobile app?” “Personally, I prefer the Hack version.”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Project Valhalla, Explained: How a Decade of Work Arrives in JDK 28” “Thank you for HACK. I love it!”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Tell HN: HN was down”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Adds another standard with problems
“I really can't endorse attempts like Hack which just introduce a new standard with its own problems.”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “My temporary PHP fix from 2014 has nearly 20M installs. Today I'm deprecating it” “hacklang is too different”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “PHP is Dead (and AI is to blame)” Little more than syntactic sugar
“ended up offering little more than syntactic sugar”
Comment from 5 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Micropolis/SimCity Clone in Emacs Lisp” “rather superficial cap systems like Hack”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “VMs won't contain cyber-capable agents”
Other programming languages people recommend
The four most recommended other programming languages, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 163 programming languages, rankedWhat people said
33 of the 41 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“They already did one better and upgraded the whole language in the form of Hack.”
“has a toggle to block AI posts”
“I really can't endorse attempts like Hack which just introduce a new standard with its own problems.”
“Hack was the better language for so many reasons”
“hacklang is too different”
“rather superficial cap systems like Hack”
“Safari cannot open the page because the address is invalid.”
“Meta's PHP (Hack) based platform is waaaaaaay easier for teams to collaborate on”
“Facebook showing off Hacklang in 2014 for people to believe in getting more canonical programming features into PHP”
“Facebook's Hack has basically the almost perfect async/await”
“So I wanted an app for a better experience.”
“The content is way more readable with the app. And the interactions (voting and replying) are much more native.”
“I used Hack, Iosevka, Adobe's Source Code Pro and more for a very long time and was very happy about all.”
“Personally, I prefer the Hack version.”
“they can get to a point where it makes sense to hire a bunch of compiler engineers to fork PHP and make the Hack language”
“It really improved on a ton of PHP's flaws.”
“IMO Hack is much better than PHP, I'm sad that it never gained traction”
“I think I've only found Liberation and Hack to appear decent on standard density display.”
“Hack is also brilliant. Thanks for your work and continued maintaining it.”
“Ended up with Hack, but it is missing the font I use”
“HACK is a fantastic reader, highly recommended”
“They eventually went Hack, the rest went Node for the most part.”
“it doesn't look like it's been updated in several years”
“ended up offering little more than syntactic sugar”
“No documentation and no portable build instructions/toolchain.”
“It's basically PHP made to look and act like Java which isn't great”
“offers a filter that hides posts via a list of keywords you can manage”
“is virtually ideal (IMHO) for serving Web traffic”
“Hack has a really expressive type system where PHP does not”
“Hack has a really expressive type system where PHP does not.”
“Thank you for HACK. I love it!”
“Java, C++, and the Hack (PHP-kind) shop are frequently guilty of this.”
“Creating Hack advanced whole PHP ecosystem and cost nothing in the grand scheme of things.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.