The compilation step, and the resulting binary, is also very useful if you need to distribute your software. As opposed to creating a ZIP file.
There are tools for creating stand-alone executables from PHP source code, but they're not as nice to use, compared to languages that were designed for this. By distributing software I also mean making your latest code live in prod.
I suppose the benefit of using PHP (or other interpreted languages) is that it's easier to create "plugins", just copy the new source files to the server.
Correct. I had a use case where I needed to run an app on 30,000+ servers and the app would be updated regularly with new features. I wasn't going to use PHP for that because it would involve not only copying the PHP binary around (and maintaining that version), but also my own app code. golang ended up being a perfect solution because I could cut the binary down to about 3-4 megs with compression and build flags. More importantly, it was just one thing to install and maintain.
PHP has a way to compile entire applications into single files, for what it's worth. You can compile it all in your CI/CD and then push the PHAR file to all the servers (instead of the thousands of regular files). I don't know if it accomplishes everything you're after, but it's been a PHP feature for over a decade. https://www.php.net/manual/en/intro.phar.php
As the op said: "There are tools for creating stand-alone executables from PHP source code, but they're not as nice to use, compared to languages that were designed for this."
There are tools for creating stand-alone executables from PHP source code, but they're not as nice to use, compared to languages that were designed for this. By distributing software I also mean making your latest code live in prod.
I suppose the benefit of using PHP (or other interpreted languages) is that it's easier to create "plugins", just copy the new source files to the server.