I've been on the other side of an exchange like that. I'm not a web developer, so "Apache" doesn't mean anything to me. I wanted to know "What does Apache do, and how does it interact with the code you write?" but they didn't seem to understand what I was asking.
I found the article informative. I can understand what their 'simplest' example does knowing only what sockets are. However, I have no idea what cgi is. Your example is magic to me. The the things the example is supposed to teach are hidden behind its abstraction.
CGI lets any server-side script "print" to the browser. (Apache "httpd" is a modular "do everything" web server, which you can customize and fine-tune for performance -- but some say it has a steep learning curve.)
I found the article informative. I can understand what their 'simplest' example does knowing only what sockets are. However, I have no idea what cgi is. Your example is magic to me. The the things the example is supposed to teach are hidden behind its abstraction.