Author here. The thing that surprised me writing this was how wrong I understood the AOT story initially. I'd repeated the "native binary, no PHP needed" line, but thats not really the case: binary mode still links libphp and PHPX, which have to ship in your deployment package. It starts without the PHP CLI, but it isn't a static Go-style binary.

The more interesting mode is -m ext, which outputs a .so that PHP loads as a normal extension. Writing a PHP extension has always meant writing C. Being able to write one in PHP changes who can realistically do it.

So, now PHP devs can ship better CLI tools (with libraries, but with less environment issues), AND can create custom PHP extensions that can speed up parts of the app.