It all depends on whether you've got a compelling reason to or not.
For us it was a simple decision, we have a mature stable product[1] that's written in C. So the path of least resistance is to write out own web framework (from scratch to avoid IP infringement problems). Sure it took time, a lot more time than grabbing something written by someone else, but that's not how it works everywhere (especially in corporate environments). Now we've got this library it makes adding HTTP client/server stuff to any of our C binaries relatively easy.
Likewise string processing in C isn't a problem once you've got a suitable library built up; ADT libraries (no I don't need to implement my own buggy hashtable again and again), regexp wrapper libraries, etc. They also help maintain consistency across platforms (our product ships on 6 different platforms including Windows).
If you're looking for instant gratification then C isn't the right language for you but a huge amount of the Internet is built on the back of things written in C. Are webservers (Apache, nginx) written in C similarly crazy? No.
Of course, it needs someone to write a solid C HTTP framework and then open source it so that it can be maintained/improved, now that would be useful. Sadly our employer has no plans to release ours, which is a shame but I have no control over that.
1. Coming up 20 years old now and >$1.5bn in revenues over those years, not too shabby.
For us it was a simple decision, we have a mature stable product[1] that's written in C. So the path of least resistance is to write out own web framework (from scratch to avoid IP infringement problems). Sure it took time, a lot more time than grabbing something written by someone else, but that's not how it works everywhere (especially in corporate environments). Now we've got this library it makes adding HTTP client/server stuff to any of our C binaries relatively easy.
Likewise string processing in C isn't a problem once you've got a suitable library built up; ADT libraries (no I don't need to implement my own buggy hashtable again and again), regexp wrapper libraries, etc. They also help maintain consistency across platforms (our product ships on 6 different platforms including Windows).
If you're looking for instant gratification then C isn't the right language for you but a huge amount of the Internet is built on the back of things written in C. Are webservers (Apache, nginx) written in C similarly crazy? No.
Of course, it needs someone to write a solid C HTTP framework and then open source it so that it can be maintained/improved, now that would be useful. Sadly our employer has no plans to release ours, which is a shame but I have no control over that.
1. Coming up 20 years old now and >$1.5bn in revenues over those years, not too shabby.