IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

A Modern Web App in C

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

Theme 1 – Language choice: C vs. alternatives
- “As someone who works on C compilers, I find the obession with C language insane. For any greenfield project, pick up C++ in lieu of C if you want a C language.” – kanbankaren
- “It's what we did at amzn in 1994 …” – PaulDavisThe1st

Theme 2 – CGI / per‑request process model: trade‑offs
- “Every request spawns a fresh process. Deploying a new version is replacing one file. That means no server restart and no downtime. New requests simply pick up the new binary.” – EGreg
- “I'd also advise everyone to avoid CGI at all costs. It's overhead is massive (new process every time, more or less) and itself is a half measure …” – rfgplk

Theme 3 – Appeal of simple, minimal deployment (single binary, low‑dependency)
- “I definitely see a chance for simple deployment tools to make a resurgence as we create more one‑off/disposable/personal software, and the low system requirements for something like busybox + lua stack are extremely minimal …” – rpdillon
- “Golang also makes it possible to serve a web site or service from a single binary …” – benlivengood

🚀 Project Ideas

Generating project ideas…

AccessiFont

Summary

  • A lightweight browser extension that lets users instantly increase text size and improve contrast on any site, addressing readability complaints like MRWEASEL’s need for 160‑170% zoom and prophittcorey’s desire for AAA‑contrast themes.
  • Core value: One‑click accessibility overrides that respect per‑site settings and persist across sessions, eliminating the need to manually zoom or hunt for dark‑mode toggles.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience General web users with visual strain, developers testing accessibility, and anyone who finds small fonts uncomfortable
Core Feature Toolbar popup with sliders for font scale (100‑300%) and contrast boost (apply a CSS filter to raise luminance contrast) plus presets for WCAG AA/AAA
Tech Stack Manifest V3 extension (HTML/CSS/JS), optional use of chrome.storage.sync for syncing preferences
Difficulty Low
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • HN users repeatedly mention needing high zoom (mrweasel: “I'm at 160-170% zoom before it's comfortable to read”) and wanting better contrast (prophittcorey: “chose two shades that were far enough apart to pass a AAA contrast rating”). AccessiFont directly solves these frustrations.
  • Simple to build, easy to publish, and can spark discussion about browser‑level accessibility tooling versus site‑specific fixes.

CStringBuilder

Summary

  • A zero‑allocation C library providing a fast string view/builder, HTML‑escaped output, and lightweight templating helpers, reducing the pain of manual string handling in C web/CGI projects (as noted by prophittcorey and PhilipRoman).
  • Core value: Lets developers write safe, performant HTML in C without fighting strcat, sprintf, or buffer overflows, while keeping the binary tiny and dependency‑free.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience C developers building CGI/FastCGI apps, embedded web services, or learning low‑level web dev
Core Feature String builder API with reserve/append, printf‑style formatting, automatic HTML escaping, and simple template substitution (e.g., {{var}})
Tech Stack Pure C99, optional Meson build script, no external dependencies
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • Commenters lament string handling in C: prophittcorey wrote “The standard string functionality is painful… I wrote my own string view and string builder”, and PhilipRoman said “Emitting strings is fine, it's the parsing that sucks.” This library gives them a reusable, battle‑tested solution.
  • Could be showcased in a tiny “hello‑world” CGI example, encouraging discussion on HN about modern C web practices versus higher‑level languages.

Forky

Summary

  • A tiny process manager that watches a CGI binary, preloads it via fork‑after‑init, and maintains a pool of ready workers using copy‑on‑write to handle tens of thousands of concurrent requests with near‑zero spawn overhead—turning any CGI program into a FastCGI‑like high‑performance service.
  • Core value: Delivers the scalability EGreg praised (“run all existing PHP code… handle 100,000 requests in flight”) while keeping the simple CGI deployment model developers love.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers deploying simple C/CGI/web apps who want high concurrency without managing FastCGI or complex app servers
Core Feature Binary‑watcher + worker pool: on new binary release, forks a set of warm workers; each incoming request is handed to an idle worker via Unix socket; workers reset state (e.g., SQLite WAL checkpoint) between requests
Tech Stack C (uses epoll/kqueue for socket multiplexing), optional SQLite WAL integration guide
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • EGreg’s comment highlights the desire: “Every request spawns a fresh process… I ended up flipping it: use the 'FastCGI' approach… to run… 100,000 requests in flight.” Forky gives that exact benefit for any CGI binary, solving the perceived overhead.
  • Would resonate with HN fans of minimalist deployment (e.g., rpdillon’s busybox experiments) and spark a thread about combining CGI simplicity with modern performance tricks.

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