I love PHP, and I'm sad by what FB did with HHVM (taking away PHP support too soon), but I do want to encourage folks to give HackLang a try. There's a lot of what PHP devs are asking for in that dialect already, and the potential of that language shouldn't be underestimated.
@pollita How does it compare with PHP nowadays? I read that after PHP7 the game is not worth the candle as the performance of PHP has overcome HHVM. Quick finding about that matter:
https://www.wpoven.com/blog/hhvm-vs-php-7-performance-showdown-wordpress-nginx/ 
HHVM vs PHP 7 performance benchmark - WordPress, Nginx
HHVM vs PHP performance benchmark tests for WordPress site, running on Nginx and ubuntu
WPOven Blog