Found the old guy :). Back then it was quasi-normal to just write your own HTTP server. A TCP socket that just slapped some headers on whatever it was reading from disk. Now everything is so complex...

I remember using server push, and the CGI interface was a hell of a lot simpler than the 8000 levels of abstraction my Typescript Angular apps going through before they hit the wire.

The worst part is that the majority of the added complexity is useless. Instead of replacing the bad parts of HTTP, HTML, JS, and CSS we just build more shit on top of it. This requires more hacks and just up the complexity level even more.