Building Server-Side Web Language Processors

 In the paper, the author talks about his experience in teaching to undergraduate students in multiple computing science courses. The web is a tool that most computing science students will need to use, web development can look boring for most students, but showing them the web working can increase the interest in web development for most students, another advantage in web development is compatibility and excitement. Web development means that any person with a functional web browser can experience everything you have done compared to any other type of program, where you may need an interpreter(python, java, ruby, etc), specific libraries or run a binary that people could refuse to run due to security concerns.

Characteristics of a web language: Must specifications for other languages can fit perfectly in web development, but certain specifications are much more important like compact syntax, garbage collection etc.  

Hypertext Transfer Protocol:  HTTP allows to transfer data between a client and a server,  using TCP, using this tool we can transmit the necessary data to communicate constantly between our client and server using for example a library that offers all the necessary data to the user. Cleaning all the data that we send to the user and specially cleaning all the data we receive from the user is extremely important, because the user could send code that could be interpreted by our server, exposing it to malicious code.

CGI, a Common Gateway interface is used to run in the servers the respective executable programs. Using already existing tools is heavily encouraged, it will save time an allow and reduce the possibility of vulnerable code.

All this specifications make a web server language an excellent tool to teach students about the web, making the appreciate and understand at a low level the tools that they will use in the future and also implementing many of the skills  they have learned.

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