3 ms·
Respectfully, if you think http is unimportant or uninteresting, then you don’t know it very well. It’s exceedingly interesting from a linguistic point of view
by omginternets 5y ago
Respectfully, if you think http is unimportant or uninteresting, then you don’t know it very well. It’s exceedingly interesting from a linguistic point of view, to name but one; the notion of verb + complement of the object is fundamental to http, and sheds light on where it tends to be the _wrong_ choice. This inevitably leads to non-trivial design discussions.
And comment about netcat happens to be exactly what I’m condoning.
As for mediocrity, sure. But it should be voluntary, not imposed by a lack of options.
- blagie 5y agoI think this: "Respectfully, if you think http is unimportant or uninteresting, then you don’t know it very well" is fairly presumptuous. HTTP has no interesting theoretical basis, and doesn't really generalize to much. Like most early internet protocols, it's kind of random and ad-hoc, with incremental hacks and improvements like keep-alive added later. You can pick up any RFC -- POP, IMAP, or whatever, and get just as much out. That's not nothing; they're worth knowing, but here's a short list of protocols and data standards which which have a theoretical basis which will teach you something deeper: - git. Brilliant data standard. - SQL. And relational database theory. - SGML. Yes, the original. Much juicier than XML in design. - Cryptographic protocols. Pick up a copy of Applied Cryptography, and read the chapter. - A survey of the early RPC and object embedding protocols (OpenDoc, OLE, etc.) - TCP/IP - Any of the various compression and/or error correction protocols. - Printer standards, especially PostScript - Video, audio, or image compression standards. .. and so on. Some of those require months of study.