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!

    • Two9A@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      It’s great: the Internet should have a bit of that sense of whimsy, and knowing that there’s official support in many libraries for “you’re asking me for coffee, but I’m a teapot” is one of those things that gets me through the day.

  • boonhet@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I have no questions, but I want to let people here know that there are two excellent websites related to this: http.cat and http.dog, for looking up HTTP status codes.

    For an example, if http.cat/418 doesn’t brighten your day, I don’t think there’s much that can.

      • boonhet@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        You’re welcome! I try to share this with people whenever I can, hoping that it makes someone’s day better. It certainly gives me a lot of joy when I can respond to something with a relevant http cat, though the few people I do it to might be getting a little annoyed.

    • kevingranade@cdda.social
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      1 year ago

      http.cat was absolutely critical when I transitioned from general application development to web backend development. Not a joke, it was just a super readable site listing the codes with a short and memorable url.

  • Erk@cdda.social
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    1 year ago

    I had been an advocate of getting just an ordinary person to do the first Lemmy ama but apparently we’ve got an absolute legend.

    Have you ever had a favourite reference to your joke come up?

    • Two9A@lemmy.worldOP
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      I did go to a conference once where they were handing out laptop stickers, and in the pack was a 418 teapot.

      Of course, a week after I stuck that to my machine, it died. Telling the laptop it was a teapot didn’t agree with it, I guess.

    • Two9A@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      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@lemmy.world
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        1 year 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@lemmy.world
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        1 year 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.

      • RonSijm@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        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

  • Veraticus@lib.lgbt
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    1 year ago

    Congratulations on creating such a cool piece of Internet arcana!

    What do you think the silliest/most useless response status code is aside from 418?

    Were there any codes you wish had been included that haven’t been for some reason?

    • Two9A@lemmy.worldOP
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      I always rather enjoyed the double entendre of “420 Enhance Your Calm”, which was an unofficial response from Twitter’s original API before “429 Too Many Requests” was standardized.

      But I can’t think of any codes which aren’t already in there, that I’d use; there are a bunch that don’t see much use, like “410 Gone”, so the list could do with trimming down if anything.

    • Two9A@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I think it’s excellent out here. I was stuck on Reddit for the longest time, and this recent debacle has pushed me to explore the networks at the edge; this feels a lot more like the Internet of old. The analogy of email is apt, I think, with the accounts on multiple servers and the interplay between.

      • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        You awaken my nostalgia, curiosity and sense of adventure when you say “explore the networks at the edge”. Are there any other networks than lemmy / mastodon that you would suggest checking out?

        • Two9A@lemmy.worldOP
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          Internet Relay Chat’s been one of those things that’s always felt out on the edge. I’ve been on EFnet since perhaps '03, and it’s a lot quieter than it was…

          With people moving en masse away from the centralized sites and their Firebase-implemented chats, we may see a pick up in traffic on the IRC networks, which would be good to see.

          • Revan343@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            What are some interesting channels on EFnet? I basically grew up on Foonetic, but moved to Slashnet when #xkcd did. I don’t pay near as much attention to IRC as I used to, but would like to change that

            • Two9A@lemmy.worldOP
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              I haven’t been exploring in the depths of EFnet in …many years. I’m confined to the programming-related channels I found in the Way Back When, nowadays: at the moment, #c is probably the most active and it’s almost all old-timers.

    • Two9A@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      My endorsement is at the bottom of that page, in fact. I wasn’t an active campaigner, but a word in favor was the least I could do.

      • Deebster@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Oops, RTFM. Well, thanks for fighting the good fight with the power of your reputation.

    • Xylight (Photon dev)@lemmy.xylight.dev
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      1 year ago

      You know sometimes you click on a link and it says “404 not found?” 404 is an HTTP status code. basically when you click on a website your browser makes an “HTTP request” to that website to get the web page, and it’ll respond with a code to tell the status. 2xx is ideal, since it means OK. 4xx means it’s an error on your end. (404, you requested a nonexistent link.) 5xx means it’s a server error.

      This person made 418, a status code for “I’m a teapot”. It was intended as an april fools joke but it’s used sometimes for when the server doesn’t want to handle a request from the client.

      • Flemmy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        As a late millennial and a programmer, I’ve got you.

        So when you request a web page, before anything else, the server gives you a 3 digit status code.

        100s means you asked for metadata

        200s mean it went ok

        300s means you need to go somewhere else (like for login, or because we moved things around)

        400s mean you messed up

        500s mean I messed up

        So this is in the 400s. Each specific code means something - you’ve probably seen 404, which means you asked for a page that isn’t there. And maybe 405, which means you’re not allowed to see this

        418 means you asked for coffee, but I’m a teapot

        • mmagod@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          I can’t say enough how amazing your explanation was. Im not a programmer but I have worked on websites (self taught) and I never knew this. Thank you!

  • binwiederhier@discuss.ntfy.sh
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    1 year ago

    Thank you for contributing to the magic if the old school internet.

    My question: How does one get to write an RFC? Do you have to become part of a certain group, or just be known in certain circles, or do you just start writing and then submit it somewhere? If I had a great idea that I think should become an RFC, what is the process to make this a reality?

    • Two9A@lemmy.worldOP
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      For Apr 1st RFCs in particular, the process is that you write your document in conformance to the RFC Editor’s Style Guide and email it to the editor directly. If you have a not-a-joke standard that you’d like to be considered, that’ll go through as an Internet Draft first, and then there are stages of review.

      I haven’t been through the latter, but the editors are very approachable over email; I had no issues submitting my RFC for review and revision.

  • 200ok@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Every once and a while I’d just like to see 200 get some love, but no. It’s all 404 this, 502 that.

    I’m just “OK”. It’s like being the middle child of response codes.

  • Cris@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What a fun AMA topic lol. I dont have a question, I’m just glad youre here, spreading the good gospel of your goofy internet standard

  • Fenzik@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    What’s the most impactful 418-related incident you’ve witnessed? I remember a few years ago npm went down and was returning 418 which spawned jokes and chaos across the web

      • body_by_make@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Yeah, I’ve seen people refer to this as the “fuck off” of response codes, especially during that incident. How does that make you feel?

        • Two9A@lemmy.worldOP
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          It’s not up to Mr Masinter or myself to police the usage of anything defined in the standard; if people feel like being assholes regarding the issuance of 418 errors, at least they’re being whimsical assholes.

          Could be worse; could be 200 with an error message inside, negating the entire point of error codes. I see that all the time.

          • ShunkW@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            When I was fixing up a legacy API app at an old job, I realized they did exactly that. I cleared it with my boss and started fixing up our error codes - pretty much all 401, 403, and 422. This blew up an integration with another app that literally threw exceptions on those codes rather than handling them. I died inside as it was my first software dev job. My first rollback of a change as well.

      • Maiznieks@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I know russian a bit and jargon for russian word “teapot” is also commonly used as “dummy” or “novice”. 418 for foreigners might have been on purpose there which brings Your April’s fool joke to a nation wide level :)