What? This is all factually incorrect.
1) PHP has supported persistent database connections for ages. The fact is, persistent DB connections aren't really that great for websites, where you need a few resources quickly and then nothing for a long time. Having 10,000 idle DB connections is a great way to eat up resources. But you can do it.
2) PHP can use cURL's multi-handles, providing a per-application keep-alive connection pool (e.g. see Guzzle: http://guzzlephp.org/tour/http.html#managed-persistent-http-...).
3) While not part of PHP itself, most serious PHP applications use something like APC, which caches PHP opcodes to prevent constant reparsing.