Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Fira Code VS Hack Lang

Compare Fira Code VS Hack Lang and see what are their differences

Fira Code logo Fira Code

A font derived from Fira Mono with added ligatures.

Hack Lang logo Hack Lang

A programming language for HHVM that interoperates seamlessly with PHP
  • Fira Code Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-23
  • Hack Lang Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-18

Fira Code features and specs

  • Ligatures
    Fira Code includes programming ligatures, which combine multiple characters into a single, visually distinct symbol, making code more readable and aesthetically pleasing.
  • Readability
    The font is designed specifically for coding and enhances readability, with a high distinction between similar-looking characters.
  • Open Source
    It is open-source, allowing for community contributions and modifications, which can lead to rapid improvements and updates.
  • Wide Language Support
    Fira Code supports a wide range of characters and symbols, making it suitable for use with many different programming languages.
  • Customizable
    Users can customize the font to fit their personal preferences and needs, including turning ligatures on or off.

Possible disadvantages of Fira Code

  • Performance Issues
    The complexity of ligatures can sometimes lead to performance issues in editors, making typing feel sluggish.
  • Compatibility
    Some older editors and IDEs may not fully support ligatures or the font itself, leading to display issues.
  • Personal Preference
    Not all developers prefer ligatures; some may find them distracting or harder to read compared to traditional monospaced fonts.
  • Learning Curve
    Developers new to ligatures might need some time to get used to the combined symbols, which could initially slow down their coding speed.
  • File Size
    The font file size is larger compared to some other coding fonts, which might be a consideration for environments with constrained resources.

Hack Lang features and specs

  • Static Typing
    Hack adds static typing to PHP, which helps catch type-related errors early and improves code quality and maintainability.
  • Async Programming Support
    Hack has built-in support for asynchronous programming, making it easier to write non-blocking, high-performance applications.
  • Compatibility with PHP
    Hack is designed to be compatible with existing PHP code, making it easier for developers to transition from PHP to Hack without completely rewriting their codebase.
  • Type Annotations
    With type annotations, developers can specify the types of variables, return types of functions, and parameter types, which leads to more readable and self-documenting code.
  • Collections API
    Hack provides a rich collections API, which includes various data structures like Vector, Map, and Set, making it easier to work with data in a type-safe way.
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Support
    IDE tools like HHVM and Hack development environments provide robust support for Hack, offering features such as autocompletion, real-time type checking, and error detection.

Possible disadvantages of Hack Lang

  • Limited Ecosystem
    Hack does not have as large an ecosystem of libraries and frameworks as PHP, which might limit third-party integrations and available resources.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers coming from PHP or other dynamically-typed languages, there is a learning curve associated with the static typing and other advanced features of Hack.
  • Facebook Dependency
    Hack was developed by Facebook and is heavily associated with their infrastructure. This can lead to concerns about its future direction being tightly controlled by a single company.
  • Deployment Complexity
    Deploying Hack applications often requires the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM), which can add complexity to the deployment process compared to traditional LAMP stack setups.
  • Community Support
    Compared to more established languages like PHP, Hack has a smaller community, which may result in fewer tutorials, forums, and community-driven support options.
  • Performance Overheads
    While HHVM improves performance for PHP and Hack code, there can still be situations where performance tuning and optimization are necessary to achieve the desired performance.

Fira Code videos

Fira Code - Programming Font Review

More videos:

  • Review - A Better Font For Web Development - Fira Code
  • Review - Fira Code in VS Code

Hack Lang videos

Project .hack Series Review! - The Game Collection

More videos:

  • Review - Hacked Movie REVIEW | Deeksha Sharma
  • Review - Review: .hack//G.U. Last Recode (PS4, also on PC)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Fira Code and Hack Lang)
Typography
59 59%
41% 41
Design
60 60%
40% 40
Tool
65 65%
35% 35
OSX
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Fira Code and Hack Lang. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Hack Lang seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 20 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Fira Code mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Fira Code yet. Tracking of Fira Code recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Hack Lang mentions (20)

  • Upcoming Hardening in PHP
    Doesn’t Facebook still run most of their backend on Hack[0] (compiled PHP subset)? [0] https://hacklang.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • PHP is the new JavaScript?
    What ever happened to Hack (https://hacklang.org) the language Meta built as a superset of PHP? Why not take an approach more similar to TypeScript? I sometimes do wonder if many of the server side rendering approaches (or alternative Node runtimes) would be better off trying to emulate some aspects of PHP. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Javascript Ecosystem, How Trash It Actually Is?
    On top of all that, now we want to make JavaScript type-safe. So let's add 10 more configuration files, add a compiler, and now we have bullcrap^2. Just like Facebook invented HackLang, Microsoft invented TypeScript, but only companies of this magnitude need such features. The average Joe from Delaware does not need all that. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Benchmarking 20 programming languages on N-queens and matrix multiplication
    PHP results: Is Hack still popular with PHP people? I was stupid enough to write some scientific code in PHP once so know how slow it can be. But if your going to do try write performant code in PHP use the HHVM interpreter. It's much faster. Hack (https://hacklang.org/) uses that under the hood by default. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • If a company's codebase for backend is PHP, is it worh it to join, when you are a fresh graduate and only know C# and Java?
    Meta: hacklang.org has the details there. It forked off of PHP ~5 years ago, and is no longer backwards compatible. I believe this is also what Slack uses. Source: almost 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Fira Code and Hack Lang, you can also consider the following products

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M+ 1m - Download and install the M+ 1m free font family by M+ Fonts as well as test-drive and see a complete character set.

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Ubuntu Mono - Ubuntu brand, app and web guidelines that help you create professional materials, software, sites, apps that build the Ubuntu brand.

Hermit - HermiT is reasoner for ontologies written using the Web Ontology Language ( OWL). Given an OWL file, HermiT can determine whether or not the ontology is consistent, identify subsumption relationships between classes, and much more.