You can use HAProxy or the nginx echo module for this. You don't even need to bother creating an index file to be served.

    location / {
        echo "42";
    }

In fact, I wonder if I could use iptables to return a string...

Oh, even better - There's probably a jQuery plugin for this!

Ah, this reminds me of a small service I wrote when our load balancing was being finicky to help the business side know if tech was aware of a problem.

http://doestechknowthesiteisdown.azurewebsites.net/

http://doestechknowthesiteisdown.azurewebsites.net/api/Yes/B...

How do you maintain data consistency at scale?

Ha! Reminds me of something I did a long time ago: http://whatis7times.thenumber6.com/

Do you plan to release it as open source in the event of getting acquihired?

On a more serious note, if SaaS APIs are function calls, this is an equivalent of a constant. Let's build a cloud programming language! Anyone wants to write cons, car, cdr, cond, quote and lambda SaaSes?

Well, I don’t know what I expected.

I'm interested in seeing the price plan and cost of the 'Pro' account.

Now someone needs to set up another Heroku app to find the question.

404 for http://fortytwo-as-a-service.herokuapp.com/42, it's a shame.

I think this will usher in a new era of 42aaS startups - A breath of fresh air we all so desperately need in these dark times. Excellent idea!

It is unconscionable that a service like this is served over plain, unsecured HTTP. How do I know that the 42 i'm getting is genuine?

I'd like to use this for my enterprise service, but we have many non anglophone users. Is there any way to get a localized response?

While your API is well-done from a technical perspective, what I'm really impressed of is your client ecosystem. There are bindings for pretty much all relevant languages, even COBOL and bare x86 assembler. And most are even part of the language core, so you don't even need a library. That must have required some negotiation skills!

Excellent idea! I will definitely use this in my next project. Do you have a business plan yet?

For the Pro plan, visit the pricing page: http://fortytwo-as-a-service.herokuapp.com/pricing

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!

(funny, no one talks about that anymore..)

Any chance of getting a writeup for the dev process?

What is this actually. Can not get the thing. Get request and you get 42. what is the point.

$100M valuation by next Wednesday.

does it run in a Docker container?

The choice of font is terrible...

This is the answer to everything!

No pricing?

Very cool MVP, but can this service support Big Data like 42,000,000,000,000?

The real question is how many lines of code? and who can use less lines :D

where is the documentation

I prefer purple.com for my 'Is this thing on?' check.

Needs more Angular...

Ironically there were 42 comments when I opened this.

but is it webscale?

I hope this will be the last comment here.

I got an Application Error as the answer.

Very clean HTML

Not clever.

text/html for this?

REST?

42

is there a SOAP API?

my karma is 42, now

"42 comments", sorry I had to break that :(