The reaction to this piece is interesting... I was sort of "ho-hum" about it, but I've written many a "web-app" in c/c++ - cgic on linux, isapi on windows... not to mention socket servers with thread pools implementing custom protocols...

I don't say that because I think it makes me special -- it's what we ALL used to do because that's the only thing we had.

After you've done that for a few years, you become VERY efficient at banging out code.