[php-src] Issue #8203: Ahead of Time Compiler/AOT for PHP8?

Issue: https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/8203 Comment Author: iluuu1994 Hi @appifys! I think what you're suggesting could make sense (it's also something that gets discussed frequently internally) but unfortunately it's impossible to tell how much of a difference it would actually make. > and many have decided to use Rust over it. I think it's important to note that even in the best case scenario with all the optimization and compilation, PHP will likely always be factors slower than C/C++/Rust. It not only comes down to the type of execution (interpretation of source code, interpretation of opcodes, JIT, etc) but also how the language is designed and what optimizations are possible. PHP is very dynamic, that's one of its strengths in terms of usability but also one of its weaknesses when it comes to performance. The fact that you can defined classes/functions in if statements or include different version of them from different files makes it impossible to make any kind of assumptions about their types or behavior. So if our primary goal was to optimize performance we might also have to tweak the languages behavior to better fit this goal. Also note that there are some good ways to improve PHPs performance. * There's approaches like [Roadrunner](https://roadrunner.dev/), [php-pm](https://github.com/php-pm/php-pm) and the likes which keep workers running to avoid the cost of bootstraping for each request. The JIT also has better chances of making a difference in long-standing processes. * Requires more work, but you can use things like [varnish](https://varnish-cache.org/) to cache things that don't change between requests