--- title: The old way to the modern web services | daily.dev description: An opinionated approach to building boring, robust web services with Go, favoring the standard library over heavyweight frameworks like Gin or Echo. Covers... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-old-way-to-the-modern-web-services-8h9dmio3g twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The old way to the modern web services | daily.dev og:description: An opinionated approach to building boring, robust web services with Go, favoring the standard library over heavyweight frameworks like Gin or Echo. Covers... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-old-way-to-the-modern-web-services-8h9dmio3g og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/8H9dMIO3G.png og:image:alt: The old way to the modern web services og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The old way to the modern web services **[zserge's blog](https://daily.dev/sources/zserge)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An opinionated approach to building boring, robust web services with Go, favoring the standard library over heavyweight frameworks like Gin or Echo. Covers writing a minimal custom middleware stack, using Go 1.16's new embed.FS for static assets instead of custom build scripts, pairing Go templates with Preact/htm for lightweight frontend rendering, using esbuild for fast bundling, and deploying via Docker or plain systemd services rather than Kubernetes. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How do I embed static assets into a Go binary without a custom build script? Go 1.16 added native asset embedding to the standard library via the embed package. You declare a variable like `//go:embed assets` above a `var assets embed.FS` declaration to include all files from a directory as a file system in the compiled binary, which can then be served with http.FileServer(http.FS(assets)) or used for templates. _daily.dev surfaces Go release notes like this for developers tracking standard library changes._ ### Do I need a framework like Gin or Echo to build a web service in Go? No, a small hand-written file implementing middleware patterns (logging, panic recovery, hooks) on top of net/http can serve as a good-enough framework for many services. Gin and Echo internally use very similar middleware logic, just with more configuration options, so switching to a full framework is only worth it once a service grows large and complex. _Developers weighing framework choices for Go services can compare tradeoffs like these on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Just Fucking Use Go](https://daily.dev/posts/just-fucking-use-go-5rdt9b0j2) · Lobsters · 93 upvotes · 14 comments - [Popular Go Web Frameworks: A Practical Guide for Developers](https://daily.dev/posts/popular-go-web-frameworks-a-practical-guide-for-developers-wi0jn69sw) · JetBrains · 28 upvotes · 0 comments - [My current Stack](https://daily.dev/posts/my-current-stack-kly45klgd) · Medium · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Gin is a very bad software library](https://daily.dev/posts/gin-is-a-very-bad-software-library-8mxglpldh) · Lobsters · 60 upvotes · 8 comments --- Tags: [#webdev](https://daily.dev/tags/webdev), [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture), [#golang](https://daily.dev/tags/golang) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-old-way-to-the-modern-web-services-8h9dmio3g) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The old way to the modern web services","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-old-way-to-the-modern-web-services-8h9dmio3g","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-old-way-to-the-modern-web-services-8h9dmio3g"},"datePublished":"2026-08-23T10:20:20.072Z","dateModified":"2026-08-23T10:22:05.980Z","description":"An opinionated approach to building boring, robust web services with Go, favoring the standard library over heavyweight frameworks like Gin or Echo. 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