Is it possible to always use the $_ENV array instead of env()?

Question

Laravel

env() is a function and $_ENV is an array. Therefore, the appeal to $_ENV is, in theory, much more productive. So why not always use it?

Answer 1

The application should not have env() or $_ENV calls at all, except for configs.
After caching configs (artisan config:cache) env() will always return an empty result.
This is done in order not to read the .env file each time the application starts.