Open the notepad and write a <html> tag. That's how it started back then. For me it was C code (CGI). Just wrote what you needed. Few hundreds of lines of C was enough for a custom server. No frameworks, no libraries, no dependencies.

Sep 5, 2025 · 12:10 PM UTC

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Replying to @SebAaltonen
String processing in C is rather nasty. When I first tried Perl I was like "OMG I can just add two strings together, what kind of magic is this?!". I did some CGI using Perl, but in early 2000s we found PHP to be a sweet spot. I hate the language but it's very pragmatic
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Replying to @SebAaltonen
> C code running through CGI You could only do that in 1999. These days you'd probably get owned instantly from some innocent mistake that wasn't bad enough to cause a segfault.
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Replying to @SebAaltonen
Back in olden times huh
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Replying to @SebAaltonen
CVS? No body needs VCS. Just edit locally and push. I did delete a local copy now and then, simply pull a remote copy.
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Replying to @SebAaltonen
Yep, I like how it's really approx 10 lines of C code with no dependencies for simple working server
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Replying to @SebAaltonen
It's still the best way for most critical things today :).
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Replying to @SebAaltonen
It also all looked and felt like shit. So there’s that.
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Replying to @SebAaltonen
Idk if it's just me and whike the Idea of API and franeworks for reusability makes sense, they have gotten overbliated and right now the cost of learning a framework seems to be much worse than making your own framework from understanding point of view alone and controlled change
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Replying to @SebAaltonen
What is this from?
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Replying to @SebAaltonen
No dependencies. So underrated.
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