Scout APM helps PHP developers pinpoint N+1 queries, memory leaks & more so you can troubleshoot fast & get back to coding faster. That's quite a mouthful, but the article itself is rather short, I can summarise it one paragraph for you.
However, many programmers didn't bother to do so because it was pointless: FreeEnvironmentStrings didn't do anything, it was literally an empty function.
it's actually still very common to write code that's going to be used by others, and assume those users will know how to use that code responsibly.
It's better software design, for vendors and users alike, to make our code as explicit and robust as possible, with as little room for interpretation and uncertainty as possible.