Yes, PHP is its own web framework, but it's not a very good one. And, as you say, implementing a better one on top of it adds a lot of overhead due to the execu

Yes, PHP is its own web framework, but it's not a very good one. And, as you say, implementing a better one on top of it adds a lot of overhead due to the execution model. With other languages, where you don't throw everything away at the end of the request, you are free to implement a good web framework without suffering additional overhead. As for a), many (most?) frameworks are able to monitor the source files and reload the application when they change, in order to enable that workflow. For example: http://cherrypy.readthedocs.org/en/latest/refman/process/plugins/index.html#cherrypy.process.plugins.Autoreloader http://cherrypy.readthedocs.org/en/latest/refman/process/plu...