Program web applications in python without a framework?

WSGI is the Python standard for web server interfaces. If you want to create your own framework or operate without a framework, you should look into that. Specifically I have found Ian Bicking's DIY Framework article helpful.

As an aside, I tend to think frameworks are useful and personally use Django, like the way Pylons works, and have used Bottle in the past for prototyping—you may want to look at Bottle if you want a stay-out-of-your-way microframework.

One of the lightest-weight frameworks is mod_wsgi. Anything less is going to be a huge amount of work parsing HTTP requests to find headers and URI's and methods and parsing the GET or POST query/data association, handling file uploads, cookies, etc.

As it is, mod_wsgi will only handle the basics of request parsing and framing up results.

Sessions, cookies, using a template generator for your response pages will be a surprising amount of work.

Once you've started down that road, you may find that a little framework support goes a long way.