[nivexous]

CGI scripts sound like a very simple idea when described here, but I avoided learning about them at the time because the name was so arcane. Is there a good reason why these weren’t simply called “executable pages”, or “response programs”, etc.?

[goatinaboat]

Because Perl scripts were only one application of CGI, which was intended to be a generic interface between the web and any sort of backend. The thing that became Oracle Web Application Server for example started life as a direct interface between a web server and an Oracle database called WOW for Web-Oracle-Web. There were others. Pretty soon the “application server” took over that role as a thing in its own right, and instead of a Perl script directly invoked by the web server you would have a JSP or something.