sozluk-cgi VS MarginaliaSearch

Using CGI protocol on a Windows server. IIS (Windows' own web server) basically interfaces with executables by running them, feeding them HTTP headers, and server variables through environment variables, and gets the response HTTP headers and the body from their STDOUT. It's very inefficient, of course, since every request requires spawning a new copy of the executable, but it had worked fine in its first months :)

Here is a very simple example from the original sources: https://github.com/ssg/sozluk-cgi/blob/master/hede.pas

I wrote Eksi Sozluk, the most popular Turkish social platform to date, back in 1999 using Delphi as CGI executables[1]. Delphi was the tool that I knew best, and CGI worked for me at the beginning. I almost immediately started having problems with EXE files constantly active, making updates impossible (as it was Windows based), which required restarting the server for any kind of update.

CGI executables also caused problems when I switched to an Alpha AXP RISC server which emulated x86, bringing the performance to a crawl. That made me switch to classic ASP, and about 10 years later, to ASP.NET MVC with routing, unit tests, abstractions, jQuery, all the shiny things at the time.

Web didn't stop there of course; there came SPA's, React, Vue and whatnot.

Now, seeing the yearning for CGI in 2023 feels funny. Have we come full circle? :)

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[1] https://github.com/ssg/sozluk-cgi

> I think a larger concern is how you'll address the Bus Factor going forward

I can't speak to how much energy it is to go from code to serving requests, but FWIW the code is AGPLv3 and seems to be updated regularly https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch/blob/v2...

Regarding the last sentence: The problem is that capitalism knows no limits. Sure, it would be nice to pay a monthly subscription for genuinely good and desirable content/search results...

But what if the CEO of the service provider needs another $5m bonus? What if the stock needs to go up so that the shareholder gamblers can get more dividend paid? What if all of a sudden the service gets bought out?

The truth is that what you are seeking is more likely to come from someone who is just passionate about it with not that much motivation based on profit. That doesn't mean that this entity or person can't be financially supported but it gets problematic when profit is the _main_ incentive.

For a good example of an interesting search engine built by a single guy, see Marginalia: https://search.marginalia.nu/

Have you heard of https://www.marginalia.nu/ in general, and especially the https://search.marginalia.nu/ from there?

There's a decent amount of people still keeping the fire burning for the "old web." It takes a little digging, but it's out there.

Some links for you:

* https://wiby.me/ — search engine that emphasizes simple/plain/hobbyist pages. Try the "surprise me" link a few times.

* https://neustadt.fr/essays/the-small-web/ — article, "Rediscovering the Small Web"

* https://search.marginalia.nu/ — author (hangs out on HN sometimes, too (marginalia_nu)

Actually, here's a link to a similar discussion on an old HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30783391

I built a recipe detector. You can, you know, train some sort of AI model to do this like with fasttext, or maybe do naive bayesian inference, but as it turns out, you can also:

https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch/blob/ma...

It works annoyingly well.

For some values of "nobody"; this westerner enjoys https://search.marginalia.nu (in addition to more common engines) and has high hopes for the new site browser:

Result ranking takes a lot of variables, and factors like excessive tracking and affiliate links is one of them in my search engine.

You can poke around in the result valuation code here: https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch/blob/ma...

#1 cause in the decline of Google maybe. https://search.marginalia.nu/ seems to manage though, so maybe Google just doesn't care.

Congratulations on shipping.

I see a lot of focus on startups, AI tools, productivity hacks, tech stacks, etc. What audience do you have in mind? I personally find that the most interesting sites on HN are outside of your scope here (examples: https://ciechanow.ski/, https://neal.fun/, https://search.marginalia.nu/).