blogtech
Infrastructure
web server
SHOW HN2024
How HN took it
15 positive, 22 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 13 critical, out of 50 comments about the project. Thread score +0.09.
Performance: 4 for, 3 againstIdea: 5 for, 1 againstExecution: 4 for, 1 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 4 againstDesign: 0 for, 3 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Impressively small codebase for a full HTTP/HTTPS server
From 2 comments
Only 3.4k of C code for a full http and https server? I honestly thought you would need a lot more for it to be fully compliant with the spec.
SPascareli13 on HNCool! I also wrote my own C web server (sources linked below) which ran a commercial website for a while. It's amazing how small and light you can make an HTTP/1.1 webserver. The…
rwmj on HN
Fun and educational to build an HTTP server from scratch
From 2 comments
Making a HTTP/1.1 server is so fun and teaches so much about networking. I highly recommend anyone interested in networking or web development give it a try.
brennopost on HNKudos for your project -- it is great fun and a learning experience to implement your own HTTP server in a low(er)-level language. One question: you say that "Transfer-Encoding:…
gonzus on HN
Survived the HN front page traffic
From 2 comments
Finally a website that doesn't crash when it shows up on the front page
greenavocado on HNlooks like it’s survived the HN front page hug. Congrats.
xyst on HN
Objections
Reverse proxies add useful features like TLS, caching and rolling deploys, which this server lacks
From 3 comments
> No reverse proxies required! This is one that has always baffled me. If there's no specific reason that a reverse proxy is helpful, I will often hang an app with an embedded…
xmodem on HNYou're missing vhosts, TLS, caching, logging, and log analysis, access control, rate limiting, custom error messages, metrics, etc.
okasaki on HNI don’t really care think there is a general case for all servers. For the minimal case you don’t need it, but in production (with a single host) it allows for rolling releases,…
dartos on HN
Not advisable for production use
From 1 comment
> Show HN: Hosting my website using my own C web server "But if you actually do this, WAT" – https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat As with much of HN, this is fun, a good…
danpalmer on HN
README benchmark against nginx seems misleading
From 1 comment
cool project, but the readme has a disingenuous comparison bench against nginx. why even put it there?
ifail_for_fun on HN
Requests
Support chunked transfer encoding or explain the 411 choice
From 2 comments
Kudos for your project -- it is great fun and a learning experience to implement your own HTTP server in a low(er)-level language. One question: you say that "Transfer-Encoding:…
gonzus on HN> No Transfer-Encoding: Chunked (responds with 411 Length Required, prompting the client to resend with Content-Length I've always wanted to undertake a project similar to this…
jpc0 on HN
Embed HTML content in the binary instead of reading from filesystem
From 1 comment
How about embedding the contents of the HTML files so that no access to the filesystem is required? That would make it not only faster but also safer.
marcodiego on HN
Questions
Why 411 Length Required for chunked encoding instead of supporting it
From 1 comment
Kudos for your project -- it is great fun and a learning experience to implement your own HTTP server in a low(er)-level language. One question: you say that "Transfer-Encoding:…
gonzus on HN
Why build this instead of using nginx or Apache
From 1 comment
Why? How is this better than running nginx or Apache2?
cynicalsecurity on HN
Alternatives named
nginx
From 2 comments
Nginx is C web server.
v3ss0n on HNWhy? How is this better than running nginx or Apache2?
cynicalsecurity on HN
lighttpd
From 1 comment
I use lighttpd which is lighter and simpler than nginx
synergy20 on HN
Kore
From 1 comment
Aside, if you want to write C apps but aren't comfortable writing the public facing parts, 'Kore' is a great framework with some handy builtins like ACME cert management, Pgsql,…
petee on HN
althttpd
From 1 comment
You may be interested in this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27431910 > As of 2024, the althttpd instance for sqlite.org answers more than 500,000 HTTP requests per day…
litbear2022 on HN
Caddy
From 1 comment
Jetty implements both TLS and compression, though in environments where I don't already have automated certificate issuance infrastructure in place I have occasionally deployed…
xmodem on HN