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Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2025 18:39:38 +0200
Message-ID: <CAMW7n8A2+WWqFJNp+3SNiDE=jdSDB0Xbg2GhzO9cy6CwZiuD4A@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: A Thank you (was Re: [PHP-DEV] PHP True Async RFC Stage 5)
To: Michael Morris <tendoaki@gmail.com>
Cc: Deleu <deleugyn@gmail.com>, php internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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From: edmond.ht@gmail.com (Edmond Dantes)

Hello, Michael Morris

> Coming back to your proposal, While I'm very aware of the async pattern f=
rom its use in JavaScript and C#, I don't quite get where it will be useful=
 in PHP.
> My experience with PHP is that it responds to HTTP requests and that step=
ping over a function that hasn't finished its output isn't helpful because =
you aren't really saving any time in that request thread as it has very def=
ined start > and end points. But we write PHP scripts the way we do because=
 of how the language is structured.

In the PHP community, there were developers who started using PHP for
stateful applications. It seems that Workerman was the first. Then
Swoole appeared, which turned PHP into the same thing Node.js turned
JavaScript into. Swoole introduced several key features:

1. A built-in HTTP server
2. Coroutines
3. Workers
4. The ability to use standard PHP functions directly inside coroutines

This made it possible to use a single PHP process to handle multiple
requests, increasing CPU utilization, reducing memory usage, and
lowering the number of processes. In certain scenarios, Swoole + JIT
PHP performs no worse than Go. This gave companies with legacy PHP
projects the ability to avoid rewriting everything in Go. Remember the
hype around Node.js a few years ago? =E2=80=9CNode.js is better than PHP, i=
t
outruns PHP.=E2=80=9D JavaScript itself didn=E2=80=99t become faster, but i=
ts async
model allowed developers to build more responsive applications with
low latency. The secret of that performance boost is exactly the
combination of stateful architecture and coroutines. This formula
became the holy grail of modern backend applications.

Swoole went even further and created an entire software ecosystem that
not only made PHP asynchronous but also provided a full set of
standard tools for modern backend development. Swoole could have given
the language a huge push forward, especially if Symfony and Laravel
had adopted it. PHP had a very good chance to compete with Go in the
API market, offering simpler development and a large set of ready-made
solutions. This is what an alternate universe of PHP could have looked
like: a PHP that people would finally stop considering a second-class
language.
...
It seems I got a bit too carried away dreaming :) I=E2=80=99ll go turn off =
my
imagination now=E2=80=A6

In other words, it is the absence of asynchrony in the language that
is the problem seriously slowing down further development. PHP has a
theoretical growth limit in its current form, and it has not yet been
reached.

> Just, don't give up and don't get frustrated. It's hard. You can still re=
ad the Drupal discussion on runtime assertions.
> I got rather testy at times after explaining the same thing for the 12th =
time. But I didn't take it personal and when my emotions needed checking I'=
d step away for a few hours.

Thank you for the support.

--- Ed