The cheap hosting provider is possible by PHP only being loaded into memory when needed to run. So you can have tons code ready to run on disk with no performance impact.

So it is definitely nice to see other languages compiled to PHP to make use of the cheap shared hosts.

I'm a long term PHP developer and I always liked functional programming. However, PHP is not so good in it [1].

I think in general, PHP's shared nothing architecture is a very good fit for functional programming. You get a HTTP Request and return a HTTP Response.

[1] https://phel-lang.org/blog/functional-programming-in-php/

I know it's fashion to hate and question anything related to PHP. But the answer to this particular question is on the website that got linked in this submission. Here it is again:

> Why Phel?

> Phel is a result of my failed attempts to do functional programming in PHP. Basically I wanted:

> - A LISP-inspired

> - functional programming language

> - that runs on cheap hosting providers

> - and is easy to write and debug