I got it working fine on the first try converting from prefork/mod_php. No wrappers, no xml crap.

Precisely four lines of basic config (one pretty long, I admit, six parameters), two of which are necessary also for mod_php, plus another six of typical allow/deny stuff securing it up. I'm not using FPM.

There are no wrapper scripts. Not sure what you mean by "xml crap", unless you mean the very same pseudo-HTMLish syntax of all Apache conf files. Yes, if you'll try to "make it work like with nginx" with externally spawned php, you're going to need some insane hacks. But it's possible, at least with mod_fastcgi. It can connect to external socket.
But mod_fastcgi spawns php itself. Reloading php.ini is easy - you just apache2ctl reload, and mod_fastcgi restarts its slave PHP tree. Almost like with mod_php.

"One mistake and you ended up with 5 time as many children as you intended, because each Apache process spawned it own." is total bull.
With mpm-worker, you get
a) An Apache master process
b) One or more worker host processes, running worker threads.
Adding mod_fastcgi to the mix adds
c) An fcgi-pm (process manager), which spawns all your FCGI handlers.
In case of PHP, it spawns the php master listener, which in turn spawns $PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN workers.
You can see that in the snippet of ps axf that I posted above.
There's literally no way to get too many of those, unless you'll mix up the PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN directive and mod_fcgid which assumes "one subprocess = one handler", spawning a new php master for each parallel request up to the limit. You can use fcgid, but then don't use the children directive. That'll limit your ability to use APC, but external memcache could be used.

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rsk, providing useless advice on the Internet since 2005.

lmao - priceless Thank you hehehehe