> since the server was directly executing the script, security issues could easily creep in (the script shares the permissions of the HTTP server).
This is still the case. PHP often runs as www-data, Rails or Django or Node or whatever often run as a normal user (usual guess, Ubuntu user id 1000) with read/write access to all the files in that user home directory. Running in a container gives some isolation now.
Anyway, writing my first CGI script in C back in 1994 was quite a hell (not a very convenient language for string processing), then Perl and CGI.pm got the upper hand for a while.
This is still the case. PHP often runs as www-data, Rails or Django or Node or whatever often run as a normal user (usual guess, Ubuntu user id 1000) with read/write access to all the files in that user home directory. Running in a container gives some isolation now.
Anyway, writing my first CGI script in C back in 1994 was quite a hell (not a very convenient language for string processing), then Perl and CGI.pm got the upper hand for a while.