"And PHP has very Erlang-like "let it crash" semantics if you squint your eyes: one request causing havoc will not affect others at all, especially if you use a

"And PHP has very Erlang-like "let it crash" semantics if you squint your eyes: one request causing havoc will not affect others at all, especially if you use a transaction to control DB side effects." Exactly my point, thank you for clarifying. PHP crashes (in some form or another) all the time, but the application can still remain up because that PHP process only has state for the one request (kind of like a single erlang process having state for only one request).