EGEGreg·Oct 12, 2026
I'm old enough to remember when the OKCupid guys wrote their own webserver in C++!
I took the concept of "slots" in requests, from it: https://github.com/okws/okws
In A Modern Web App in COkCupid
okws
C++2012–2026
OkCupid / okws · Archived
okws
The OK Web Server
9Distinct people
10Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
264GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
The OK Web Server
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year10 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2012-04-10 03:57:37 UTC to 2026-10-12 16:53:13 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
10 sourcesIf the custom server they were referring to was OKWS (https://github.com/OkCupid/okws), I wouldn’t be surprised if it was basically a rewrite.
In Moving OkCupid from REST to GraphQL> When you can be just as productive as a web developer in c++ let me know.
I used to work at OkCupid. The entire web application is written in C++ [1] and I was quite proficient with the language even before joining the company. Then I joined a medium sized game studio where C++ was also the most common language, and as you can guess we also decided to built the game landing pages and user management system using C++ with Boost and an in-house template system.
I am not OP but you asked to let you know if someone is a productive web developer in C++, well, I am.
[1] https://github.com/OkCupid/okws
In The Ethics of Web PerformancePeople generally invest in startups because they believe the sales/customer numbers. Not because they pay attention to the implementation of every single component which is used by the company.
That said OkCupid famously used a custom HTTP-server to power their site:
https://github.com/OkCupid/okws
In OpenBSD, C, httpd and SQLite – Web App stackActually, some people use C++, with an OKCupid framework.
https://github.com/okws/okws
In Why Go and Rust are not competitorsFound a post by one of the developers describing the decision in some detail: http://www.brightjourney.com/q/okcupid-write-web-server
They've also open sourced their server: https://github.com/okws/okws
In Chris Lattner on SwiftOKCupid's open source C++ web application server
11 points · Open discussionhttp://cherokee-project.com/ and http://www.lighttpd.net/ are the only other ones I've heard of, and they seem to have their own niche they target. There is also https://github.com/okws/okws. I'm sure there are many more, but none of them have sizable market share, especially compared to nginx/apache.
In We Should Ditch NginxIn terms of the backend, OKC have their own webserver, OKWS[0]. It's been discussed on HN before[1].
It's a clever and IMNSHO insufficiently copied architecture with interesting performance and security characteristics.
[0] https://github.com/okws/okws
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2077484
In Reverse Engineering OKCupidHave a look at the OK Web Server[1]. It has a clever design that cleanly separates application and HTTP concerns and the default libraries are written in C++.
[1] https://github.com/okws/okws
In PHP: A fractal of bad design