Everything old is new again. So in the old days there was a way to supply a binary rather than source code. That binary could be fast starting. There was even

Everything old is new again. So in the old days there was a way to supply a binary rather than source code. That binary could be fast starting. There was even an open standard for connecting those binaries to different web servers. The standard used unix patterns such as reading stdin and writing stdout. Sometimes it seems like people have created an insanely high learning curve to run their CGI programs. Sometimes it seems like most of the magic and value add of some of these platforms is that they reduce some of the overhead they added.