On a related note, we go through great lengths in the Kestrel HTTP server [0] (which also uses libuv) to have fast HTTP parsing. As an example, we attempt to read the method and the HTTP version as longs and compare them to pre-computed longs in order to have fast comparisons and reuse strings containing standard methods and versions (reducing memory allocation is the main driver of our optimizations) [1], so we don't have to allocate those strings on every request. We do a similar thing for headers [2]. We also manage a lot of our own memory, despite using a garbage collected language [3].

[0] https://github.com/aspnet/KestrelHttpServer

[1] https://github.com/aspnet/KestrelHttpServer/blob/3a424f6abac...

[2] https://github.com/aspnet/KestrelHttpServer/blob/dev/src/Mic...

[3] https://github.com/aspnet/KestrelHttpServer/blob/dev/src/Mic...