[ldng]

> - Why is the language so unbelievable slow?

In comparison to what? For the class it is in, it is very fast.

PHP is what I would an intertwined language as quite often people don't separate PHP the language, PHP the included battery (aka the standard library), PHP the easy deployed script and PHP the web tool at core.

It's both a curse and a blessing IMHO. It easy to ignore the differences but hard to learn about them later and the official doc not really teach about it doesn't help. I am not say the doc is bad, just trading off clearly for easiness. It probably helped PHP grow so popular.

As for the quote, PHP the language _is_ slow but the mitigated by a fast standard library (mainly C function wrappers). That said, PHP 5.4 is faster than ever.