PHP Framework delivered as a C extension?

PHP
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Not wishing to pollute the thread : [Advanced] Ideas for a universal PHP front controller class in the vein of PDO. and seeing as at least part of that thread is bemoaning the sometimes vast amount of file reads some frameworks make I’d like to bring to your attention this project I came across yesterday.

phalconphp.com PHP Framework delivered as a C extension.

It is an interesting idea and was completely new to me, and it has some very important drawbacks as are well highlighted here. PHP Frameworks as Extensions - will they catch on? (May 2012)

Has anyone tried this approach?
Do you think it will catch on?
Do you imagine one of these frameworks could eventually move from PECL into the main PHP source?

FWIW I remember the bad old days before PDO, when we had to be familiar with many database abstraction layers although some were better than others. PDO really was a godsend (nod to Mysqli of course too).

Cheers.

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I think making an entire framework as a php extension has many serious drawbacks.
First of all the number of contributors for such projects will be very very low, most likely it will be developed by just a single developer.
The reason for this is that our of 100 php developers probably only 1 can also program in C, most php developers don’t even understand the C code when they see it.
This brings us to the next drawback - how can you trust the framework if you don’t understand the code? I mean from the security point of view.
When framework is written in php you are able to modify the source code if you really cannot find a way to extend existing features, modifying C code is out of the question for most php programmers.

Sure C programs are at least 10 times faster than php but if that’s the type of speed you looking for then why use PHP at all? Use something like cppcms which is a pretty good CMS written completely in C++.

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