While not trying to defend PHP (well, tbh I'm trying but just a little), but there is a phalcon framework ( https://phalconphp.com/ https://phalconphp.com/ ) wh

While not trying to defend PHP (well, tbh I'm trying but just a little), but there is a phalcon framework ( https://phalconphp.com/ https://phalconphp.com/ ) which is written in C and works as a PHP Extension. While the rest of the code still is in PHP, at least the framework bits including a lot of boilerplate are much faster that way.