Trivial REST server in various languages to compare | Hacker News Reader

Trivial REST server in various languages to compare

github.com

22 pointsbegoon19 comments

What is the criteria for chosing a framework vs implementing using language fundamentals?

I don't care about one over another, but I would prefer if all examples followed the same approach. It would make the comparison more valuable.

I wondered this too. Personally, as someone that enjoys using C# a lot I was somewhat surprised it's example went with a plain HttpListener like that. But, that seems to be the general theme of all the examples there.

Personally I think a more real world method would have been to use the most popular web server framework for the given language. Someone else already commented that the Swift example would never do it this way in a real application.

Same thought! Python uses FastAPI. C# with ASP.NET looks similarly terse, and ASP.NET is “built in” (kinda).

var app = WebApplication.Create();

app.MapGet("/people", () => new[] { new Person("Ana"), new Person("Filipe"), new Person("Emillia") });

app.Run();

record Person(string Name);

The above (struggling to find the backtick on my Mobile keyboard) is straight from the ASP.NET website: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/aspnet/apis

For some reason the repo uses outdated Mono (which is limited to ancient .NET Framework APIs and old C# version) which could be the culprit.

In any case - https://github.com/begoon/http-server/pull/1

It seems that the line is drawn on whether it's possible to do HTTP and JSON using the stdlib without having to write a HTTP message and JSON parser. For the cases where JSON is not in the stdlib, they seem to just use a library. But yeah, that makes the comparison less valuable because ALL languages could have used a library that lets you do the equivalent of the Python version.

But it's still valuable to know which languages support this out-of-the-box, perhaps.

I was wondering this as well. The Python example almost felt like cheating with FastApi....but I suppose it's also pythonic.

Would have been even more interesting to split the code in different folders (maybe only keeping the global Makefile) as it would have demonstrated the level of boilerplate / config / dependencies needed for what is basically the "hello world" of the web.

Hey, the author here.

Agree, I wasn’t consistent with “a framework” vs “just language” approach. Ideally it should be 100% one or another.

My idea was to use the standard library as much as possible, but I didn’t eliminate the use of third party libraries entirely if it would allow async/concurrent processing.

It all started with Go vs Rust vs Zig as the main point of comparison. Then I added more languages I am familiar with.

By far, IMHO, Go is a clear winner in terms of being 100% with the standard library, fully concurrent and quite concise.

Sure, JS/TS implementations are also concise but it is different, not natively compiled technology.

The language's selection is purely my personal familiarity, so nothing wrong with Java, it’s just not my area.

this thread is going to be dozens of replies of people overly defensive of their language producing the whole gamut of "the code in LANGUAGE_X is not optimal, it should use SOME_TECHNOLOGY instead"

I'm defensive that one of the most widely used languages isn't even on the list.

Maybe that's why there's no example in C or C++.

No bash? https://github.com/dzove855/Bash-web-server

The Swift server is implemented using NIO directly, which nobody will do, ever. They probably should’ve used Vapor or Hummingbird…

i am surprised at how many languages look more like some kind of yaml configuration file rather than actual program.

also of note is to notice how many languages lack good support in standard library and therefore require much more code to be needed.

> also of note is to notice how many languages lack good support in standard library and therefore require much more code to be needed.

That’s fine for web oriented languages. But I sure hope others aren’t including a complete HTTP stack in the standard library.

Zig is a system language but it still has HTTP and JSON in the stdlib.

No Java, in the top three most widely used languages.

What problem does it address? What is being compared?

Why is this REST and not just HTTP?

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