Why am I writing a JavaScript-to-PHP5 compliler (in Ruby)?

PHP is everywhere and is inescapable these days.

A typical hosting plan includes PHP. Maybe not PHP 5.3 yet, but definitely some version. And "regular people" like PHP, or more accurately, they like stuff written in PHP: Wordpress, Drupal, Magento, SugarCRM, and just about every other common CMS, shopping cart, and bulletin board system.

Irregular people (programmers) typically aren't as keen on PHP. Programmers may not agree on many things, but they do tend to think JavaScript is not too bad, and that's high praise. It's everybody's 2nd favorite language.

I don't know about you, but when given a task to, say, write a plugin for some PHP app, I would love to write it in a language I enjoy using. Sure, I could always throw out the entire codebase and start over in node.js or something, but I don't have time for that.

Or maybe I do, but I doubt my clients would pay me to do that. And even if they did, they won't necessarily be happy clients when they find out that their "Wordpress" site won't let them use any Wordpress plugins, because they're not actually running Wordpress anymore, but some incompatible custom blog engine running on a strange new platform.

Ideally, this compiler I'm calling phecma could be part of a piecemeal transition to a better place. No need to throw out the entire codebase and platform. Boil that PHP frog slowly. Eventually, it's all ECMAScript. When that happens, this is like the Wordpress Singularity or something.

Intrigued? Phecma is on Github.