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

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

188 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] 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I need an ELI5 for this I'm a stupid Gen Z

[–] [email protected] 60 points 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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I need one too and I'm a stupid Gen Y

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 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!