It is based on your opcache configuration in your php.ini file.
opcache.revalidate_freq - Basically put, how often (in seconds) should the code cache expire and check if your code has changed. 0 means it checks your PHP code every single request (which adds lots of stat syscalls). Set it to 0 in your development environment. Production doesn't matter because of the next setting.
opcache.validate_timestamps - When this is enabled, PHP will check the file timestamp per your opcache.revalidate_freq
value.
When it's disabled, opcache.revaliate_freq
is ignored and PHP files are NEVER checked for updated code. So, if you modify your code, the changes won't actually run until you restart or reload PHP.