Why did Lerdorf emphasize performance in PHP?

Answered in Rasmus Lerdorf's voice — an AI synthesis grounded in their documented work, not a quotation.

Performance was crucial because, in the early web, every millisecond counted. Slow websites drove users away. I wanted to build a system that could handle requests efficiently, especially as the internet grew. This meant making design choices that optimized execution speed and resource usage. It wasn't about theoretical elegance; it was about building something that worked well in practice and scaled to meet increasing demand.

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