I started to read about HHVM and Zephir. I was very excited at first, that performance jumps up thanks to this technologies. But then I started to ask myself a question. If It really gives you such performance like owners of this technologies says.
Now I am going to say, how do I think it looks like. Correct me, if I am wrong.
Php Script Live Process: Run Script -> Compile -> Execute Script
The obvious problem here, is with compiling. We need to compile our script every time it has been started.
Let's pretend I have Apache2 installed and I am running my php script named "test.php" with:
APC:
APC turned on and APC option to check for changes off.
It should looks like that:
Run Script -> Execute Script
Because it's already compiled to our memory and ready to use.
HHVM:
Hip Hop Virtual Machine, would behave similar to APC. The difference here is, virtual machine, which for standard PHP with APC is Zend Engine.
So it goes like that:
Run Script -> Execute Script
Because it's already compiled (in memory?) and ready to use.
Zephir:
I compiled my script to C extension. So I guess it doesn't need compiling? (I am not sure about this). So the functions inside my php script are native ones now.
So, if I write another script named "test2.php", which will run my native functions which were in "test.php" (Yes it should have .zep format, but it doesn't matter for now).
Now using APC I avoid compiling process.
Run Script -> Execute Script
And now I am confused. As far as you can see it's all the same now. I dont see any kind of advantages of using Zephir and HHVM over standard APC. So I would like to hear, if I am correct or totally wrong?
Zephir can't handle high level objective oriented code. Speed of your application will be worse than clean PHP way.
Here you can find comparsion of clean PHP vs Zephir. https://github.com/dgafka/zephir-BookStore
So, if you want to rewrite your application to zephir, think twice before you will do it.
https://github.com/phalcon/zephir/issues/694#issuecomment-67987616