New note: reasons to use Nginx

content/notes/reasons-to-use-nginx.md

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+---
+title: "Reasons to use Nginx"
+date: 2022-09-09T13:52:55-07:00
+replyURI: "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32770766"
+replyTitle: "Nginx…is legacy software being run into the ground"
+replyType: "DiscussionForumPosting"
+replyAuthor: "nginxlegacy"
+replyAuthorURI: "https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nginxlegacy"
+---
+I generally recommend Caddy over Nginx, but Nginx does still have certain advantages:
+
+- Nginx supports OpenSSL commands that enable features like TLS record padding.
+
+- Performance: better latency and scalability to more connections. Not everyone uses a CDN for static/cached content
+
+- Kernel-accelerated TLS offload on Linux and FreeBSD
+
+- Many existing modules provide unique functionality. The many modules for live video streaming and image processing are good examples.
+
+- An ecosystem of patches with features like HPACK static dictionaries, dynamic TLS record sizing, etce
+
+> …has terrible language integration.
+
+Generally, "language integration" isn't really a use-case for vanilla Nginx; it's a use-case for Nginx Unit, an Nginx language-specific module, or OpenResty. I personally prefer the reverse-proxy route since it lets me use whatever language I want regardless of server support: Go, Rust, Python, C, etc.
+
+If none of these are that important then I absolutely would not recommend Nginx; Caddy would be the better tool.
+
+> People aren't writing internet scale software in lua for a reason.
+
+I'd include Itch.io, much of Taobao, and some of the most popular API gateways (including Kong) in the category of "Internet-scale software written by 'people'".
+