May 11, 2026
Lisp, Lies, and PHP Vibes
Phel v0.36.0 – Lisp on PHP, now with numeric tower and first-class Vars
PHP gets a Lisp glow-up and the comments are weirdly hyped
TLDR: Phel’s latest release makes this PHP-based coding language much more powerful, especially with smarter math and more flexible core features. The community reaction was mostly adoring, with fans praising its Clojure-inspired style while others instantly turned the celebration into a wishlist for what should come next.
A niche coding project just dropped a surprisingly beefy update, and the real show is the comment section cheering like their indie band finally sold out a club. Phel, a Lisp-style language that runs on top of PHP, added a pile of upgrades: better number handling for things like exact fractions, giant numbers, and high-precision decimals; new built-in types for things like queues and UUIDs; and a big quality-of-life boost with first-class “Vars,” which basically gives developers more direct control over named values. Translation for normal humans: it got smarter with math, more flexible to use, and faster to test.
The loudest reaction was pure taste-policing in the nerdiest possible way. One commenter swooned that being “inspired by clojure” is basically a badge of quality, which is the kind of line that instantly tells you this crowd has Opinions. Another fan congratulated the team for standardizing naming style, proving once again that programmers can absolutely throw a party over punctuation. And then came the classic wishlist energy: one user immediately asked for the tool to connect to a live running PHP process, because in tech comments, every release announcement is also a feature request in disguise.
There wasn’t much outright fighting, but the vibe was deliciously familiar: half proud parents, half backseat product managers. One person admitted they barely use PHP and still wished Phel would find a niche and become widely used—which is either wholesome support or the gentlest possible way to say, “I’m rooting for you from a safe emotional distance.”
Key Points
- •Phel v0.36.0 adds first-class Vars, including `(var sym)`, `#'sym`, callable `PhelVar`, and Var operations such as `alter-var-root`, `with-redefs`, and `with-bindings`.
- •The release expands Phel's numeric tower with `Rational`, `BigInteger`, and `BigDecimal`, ratio literals, numeric predicates and constructors, and runtime dispatch for mixed numeric operations.
- •New runtime value types include `Uuid`, `PhpClass`, `MapEntry`, and `PersistentQueue`, with supporting constructors, predicates, and collection behavior changes.
- •Testing tooling is enhanced with `phel test --list`, `phel test --last-failed`, and `phel test --slowest=N` for discovery, reruns, and performance reporting.
- •The release also changes namespace and printing behavior and fixes parsing, numeric interoperability, float emission, namespace resolution, and integer conversion edge cases.