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I'm the author of an April Fool's Internet Standard, AMA (self.asklemmy)

submitted 2 years ago by Two9A to c/[email protected]

183 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Let's get the AMAs kicked off on Lemmy, shall we.

Almost ten years ago now, I wrote RFC 7168, "Hypertext Coffeepot Control Protocol for Tea Efflux Appliances" which extends HTCPCP to handle tea brewing. Both Coffeepot Control Protocol and the tea-brewing extension are joke Internet Standards, and were released on Apr 1st (1998 and 2014). You may be familiar with HTTP error 418, "I'm a teapot"; this comes from the 1998 standard.

I'm giving a talk on the history of HTTP and HTCPCP at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin later this month, and I need an FAQ section; AMA about the Internet and HTTP. Let's try this out!

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Do you regret adding it, or with the knowledge you have today, would you still add the 418?

Since a bunch of languages have not implemented it, or/and has long discussions about it:

https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/15650
https://github.com/golang/go/issues/21326
https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/14644
https://github.com/psf/requests/issues/4238
https://github.com/aspnet/HttpAbstractions/issues/915

[–] Two9A 43 points 2 years ago (3 children)

You'd have to catch up with Mr Masinter to get his opinion on adding error 418, I'm afraid; that piece of the business wasn't my work.

I'm happy it's there though: it may have sparked flamewars, but at this point what hasn't. It does bring somewhat of that sense of humanity to the whole enterprise of working on the Internet.

[–] DangerBit 13 points 2 years ago

I remember when I learned about this, I was working on an absurdly large project on my own. I was lost in all the details and losing hope of ever finishing. I was working on the backend API when I learned of this and took the time to implement the 418 response. It felt silly and brought the fun back to the project.

[–] Commanderoptimism 9 points 2 years ago

I remember when I first learned of error 418 and it did really help me understand that the Internet as we know it was made and shaped by regular people with senses of humor. Helped make it seem a bit less daunting/intimidating to understand.

It reminds me of how the Network Port 666 is specifically reserved for doom, always love Easter eggs like that in officially used protocols.

[–] livingina 5 points 2 years ago

I'm just finding out about this trivia now but I'm a big fan

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sheesh, some people have no sense of humour.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Personally I don't have any problems with it (if that was directed at me) - I've added 418 as "unhandled exception code" response to a bunch of applications, so I can easily differentiate whether my application is throwing an error, or whether it's some middleware gateway AWS io-thing

I was just curious what OP thought about it, since in the early days it wasn't uncommon to add goofs or easter-eggs into software, but nowadays not done so much... and apparently the "HTTP Working Group" doesn't like it either... So I was curious whether OP though in hindsight whether it should've been added or not

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

How can it be unhandled? It's right there in the song, just before the spout!