No, it really doesn't. Forking is expensive. Running a multithreaded (even if it's green threads rather than OS threads) http server and web application makes f

No, it really doesn't. Forking is expensive. Running a multithreaded (even if it's green threads rather than OS threads) http server and web application makes far better use of multi-processor capabilities. Shell scripting is a handy tool but it is also slow so you wouldn't write hot paths in shell scripts. And for the same reasons you wouldn't write busy web servers in CGI. Both are fork() heavy.