[5982] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: rewrite of NCSA httpd ?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Simon E Spero)
Sun Oct 2 12:58:18 1994
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 1994 17:56:36 +0100
Errors-To: listmaster@www0.cern.ch
Errors-To: listmaster@www0.cern.ch
Reply-To: ses@tipper.oit.unc.edu
From: Simon E Spero <ses@tipper.oit.unc.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www0.cern.ch>
On Sun, 2 Oct 1994, Richard Huddleston wrote:
>
> I've just spent the past six weeks wading through the biggest collection
> of spaghetti code I've ever seen in my life: the NCSA httpd.
>
There's no need to take such a hostile tone in a public forum; although
the NCSA code has many problems relating to performance, I found the code
quite simple to understand. Remember that when this code was written, Rob
was also a full time student. In those circumstances, the most important
dimension to optimise for is time-to-implement- it's more important to
make something work than to make it look pretty. Considering the amount
of evolutionary changes that took place in HTTP, and all that
interference from those Browser Weenies, the code is remarkably clear.
If you want to see real pasta programming, take a look at the WAIS source
code (only some of which I'm responsible for).
Simon
