When a customer is loading my www.my-phalcon-project.org, than my server (p.e. apache) is starting the php-interpreter to run my index.php. Where is now the different to Symfony or Laravel, both also start the php-interpreter. I don't can see there a C-Extension on my server (sorry i'm a beginer with phalcon). Where is the benifit like "more faster"?
One of many benchmarks where Phalcon is the fastest:
https://www.nixsolutions.com/blog/comparative-testing-php-frameworks/
@tztztztz thanks for this stats-link! :)
I think as a beginner to this topic, the following could be interesting for you:
https://medium.com/swlh/compiled-vs-interpreted-code-performance-e1a63299760b
or
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/compiled-versus-interpreted-languages/
and more theoretically: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/339866/can-we-make-general-statements-about-the-performance-of-interpreted-code-vs-comp
It's easy to understand, Phalcon is a php extension so it add the whole framework as native php functionalities while others frameworks need to include a lot of files for most not necessary which use server capabilities uselessly.
Most PHP frameworks are written in PHP. So when a request for a URL comes in to the server, PHP must open and interpret all the needed framework files, in addition to any code you write. This takes a lot of time. Technologies like OPCache help reduce this time.
Phalcon is different, in that it's loaded as a PHP extension. This means it's only loaded once - when the Apache server is started. When a request for a URL comes in to the server, PHP must open and interpret any code you write. However, all the framework (Phalcon) code is already loaded, which means none of the framework files need to be interpreted.
One downside, howere, is that you can't bundle up all the necessary files for your website into a single portable directory. Phalcon has to be installed like other extensions and your code can only run on a server with that extension installed.