I am considering developing a web application. It's a user interface to a system of records. No fancy widgets. In fact no javascript. It is expected to work with elinks as a client.
While I'd usually choose Python for such application, I am deliberately choosing C++ this time, to get a first hand experience of the current C++ ecosystem to build web applications. Nearly half of its usage will be on localhost and rest half over the web. For localhost usage I can reduce the overheads of TLS and in fact a full web server, too. For example, I can use a local web server like cpp-httplib. For web usage I am considering lighttpd. Now I have two options: 1. Use FastCGI with lighttpd (no cpp-httplib). 2. Use reverse proxy with cpp-httplib server, and use the same cpp-httplib server for localhost interactions without lighttpd in picture. Intuitively I feel cpp-httplib would perform better on localhost (No TLS, No IPC) than lighttpd + FastCGI. I did some quick trials and find the results that are a bit counter-intuitive to me. lighttpd + FastCGI + TLS with elinks as client gives a much snappier feel than cpp-httplib standalone server + no TLS with elinks. Is this something to be expected? Are there any other choices for above mix of requirements? These are on NetBSD 10.1 amd64. -- Mayuresh
