[jayrwren]

Forking a process per request is expensive, interpreter or not.

Slashdot used apache mod_perl back then. It never forked a process per request.

[poizan42]

Slashdot started in 1997, the first release of mod_perl was on 12.03.1998. They certainly used cgi at first, just check the url here: https://web.archive.org/web/19980113191337/http://slashdot.o... - it says cgi right there.

Edit: Seems I was wrong about the date, it was actually 28-Jul-1997[1], nevertheless slashdot was only launched two months later, and as the link above witnesses didn't seem to have used it at first.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/19971210053529/http://perl.apach...

[goldenkey]

CGI was commonly used by everybody and anybody in those years. I recall Slashdot having some CGI pages, not everything but forms processing.