I cannot stand Apache, not the foundation, the web server. We are stuck with it at work, and I groan when I have to venture into an httpd.conf. XML is so clunky and verbose, I have no idea why it caught on as the defacto config language for so many “enterprise” projects other than there weren’t any better choices at the time. Which, that’s fine, XML sucks, but so does YAML (though not nearly as much). Aside from that, which for me at least if I see a project that uses XML I immediately start looking for alternatives, in my experience Apache’s documentation sucks. It feels archaic to get through, not a lot of useful examples, just mostly things like “here how to pass in the default values”. The default Apache logs suck. Reverse Proxying requires way more XML config to setup than it should. I could go on and on about my disdain for Apache/httpd.

When we have options like Nginx, Caddy, or even Traefik, which mostly work out of the box, things like reverse proxying take a line or two of config, and they have good to really good docs, I have no idea why anyone would pick Apache over any of those unless they are working in an environment that is soo entrenched in enterprise software, like Apache, switching isn’t an option.

Because of httpd, I’ve mostly avoided Apache projects. So, I don’t have too much hands on experience for much else to compare, only a lot of (I’m sure biased/frustrated) reading of others experiences.

However, I did decide to give OpenWhisk recently. If I hadn’t already known, I would’nt have believed you if you told me it was an Apache project. I haven’t yet had to look at any XML, minimal time spent on config, it supports modern platforms/techniques out of the box, and it has a CLI that doesn’t suck. Pretty much the opposite of my experiences with httpd. I assume all of this is due to it being a new project without 20+ years of built up enterprise cruft.

So, at least for me, I’ll be avoiding any older Apache projects if I’m able to find a comparable modern one. But, just because there old enterprise stuff sucks to deal with for the average not-enterprise person, that doesn’t mean there new stuff will too, and I’ll be totally willing to give it a shot. One thing Apache has proven is even though the user experience may kinda suck, the underlying tech is usually pretty fucking solid, open source, and you’ll likely not have to worry about breaking changes every month (or decade).