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A 3x faster Python would make it about 2x slower than PHP.

That is way easier to digest than the current ~5x performance penalty for using it.

I would probably not consider PHP anymore if Python was 50% of its speed.

I would never consider anything else than Python or PHP for web projects. Developer time is more precious than CPU time.

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You can have small developer time with other technologies too (JavaScript, Go, Elixir etc) and get some additional benefits compared to PHP. Honestly I don't see the reason to use PHP today unless you have to;

1. Maintain existing PHP codebase

2. Your team only knows PHP

Except for speed, PHP has another awesome thing going for it: Statelessness.

You throw some PHP files on a server and have a working web application. As soon as you change a PHP file, the change is in effect on next reload of the page. You might be able to do the same in Python, but everybody in Python world is doing the long running thread approach, so you would be on uncharted territory.

If you want to optimize for developer time you should look at statically typed languages with rich type systems that have little overhead.

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