Philip G wrote:
There's arguments on both sides of the fence on this one. I personally like
having organization in my code, which is why I like the multi-file method
and we can just use APC to speed up code execution. However, not everybody
has that option, which runs into a problem. On top of that, you start
relying on your cache, not your code efficiency, for speedy code which, imo,
is very, very bad.
Now, as far as Zend_Loader, don't use it. It completely negates the ability
to use APC. Zend_Loader allows dynamic loading of classes which just happens
to prevent APC's ability to determine which files should be cached. Always
use require/include for your classes, that way you can use APC and its
features. Zend_Loader is convenient, but it's not worth the overhead it
gives. The only situations I use Zend_Loader is during factor class
creations. That's it.
This is absolutely not true as Matthew already mentioned. Enabling APC removes almost all overhead for loading those files. I was profiling my code (for other reasons), I've seen dumps in Kcachegrind, you can do the same.
I guess it wouldn't hurt offering some more options for people that cannot enable it for some reasons (shared hosting etc) but as general rule, APC is there to solve exactly this problem. Also opcode caching is in no way related to writing good, efficient code.
Karol
