15 ms·

“Cookies are small text files” – what? (2009)

55 points by mr_mitm 4y ago

mmastrac 4y ago
For those of us that came from the early days of the web, they really were small text files - at least on windows.
- rowls66 4y ago
  The early days of the web were over by the time Microsoft got involved.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
Seems like a very uninteresting semantic argument
horsawlarway 4y ago
Welp - won't be reading this blog again. There's zero content of substance here, just a petty semantic argument and a generally degrading attitude towards users.
- lgas 4y ago
  In fairness it does have "shallow" right in the URL.
mode80 4y ago
FWIW, I once explained cookies this way to my non-technical co-founder of that day. I could see the clouds part and he confessed it removed all the magic and mysticism surrounding these web cookie things. It was like “ah, just small text files. Got it.”
- dunham 4y ago
  Yeah I could see that. A lot of people are not going to understand "data" as something concrete and "string" is going send them way off the path.
agwa 4y ago
Back in the day, cookies were delicious delicacies: https://i.imgur.com/YeGGd4B.png https://i.imgur.com/YeGGd4B.png https://www.squarefree.com/2004/07/24/cookies-are-no-longer-delicious-delicacies/ https://www.squarefree.com/2004/07/24/cookies-are-no-longer-...
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
'cookies.sqlite is most definitely not a "text file"' I have a mildly differing opinion. Are not all files, by default, text files? It is just the way the text inside them is structured that determines their actual format? edit: I might be opening a can of worms here, because I have a suspicion people will start pointing to extensions and whatnot.
- hedora 4y ago
  The internet predates sqlite. They used to be stored as a directory of .txt files.
  - jwilk 4y ago
    Or more precisely: cookies (1994) predate SQLite (2000).
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago
  I think all files are, by default, binary files, and it’s the binary data inside them that determines their actual format. Try opening a non-text file (e.g. an executable) in a text editor — the editor will probably try to interpret the file as Latin-1 text, but this will just look like garbage, and can’t really be said to be a sane representation of the contents of that file.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    To add to this, a text file is only special because it’s binary contents are restricted(ish) to a set of numbers an editor knows how to interpret into human-readable glyphs. Now then, if you want to discuss how most modern (non-executable) file formats are just zip files, then we can have more fun.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- krapp 4y ago
  Text files map to character encodings that represent human language - they're meant to be written and read directly by human beings. While all text files are binary, not all binary files are text. A database file can contain text, but it isn't a text file in and of itself.
yakshaving_jgt 4y ago
Using text files as a mental model to describe cookies is useful. It might not be entirely correct, but it’s still useful. Discarding a constructive mental model like this for the sake of pedantry — especially when it makes the idea described harder to understand — is just stupid. And so, it follows that this article is just stupid.
- xSxY3fj5gVCmvWE 4y ago
  What exactly is the useful part, though? I mean, it's technically wrong. I don't see how this description improves layman understanding of cookies, much less to the point of offsetting the wrongness of it. In fact, you could argue "text files" is straight up confusing: you'd expect them to be human-readable, but they're not. They're machine-oriented data, often with several layers of encoding and serialization. The article was right at the time of writing, and it's even righter today.
  - johannes1234321 4y ago
    > What exactly is the useful part, though? I mean, it's technically wrong. At least in Internet Explorer 3 and Netscape Navigator, cookies were stored as individual files in the file system. In that sense at some point in time it was somewhat correct. However the relevant part: On e in a time computer users knew files and we're working a lot with them. Operating systems like Windows 95 pushed files into the front (instead of first picking the program and in the program opening the thing they pushed Explorer to "explore the computer" and then finding the right program for the file) There a file was a understandable unit of data.
  - Grimburger 4y ago
    > it's technically wrong What would you define a DNS TXT record as? Technically speaking. > you'd expect them to be human-readable, but they're not humans are sorta ok at making data readable https://i.imgur.com/ExMCVsl.png https://i.imgur.com/ExMCVsl.png
- bgro 4y ago
  Every time I look into the big new tech thing, or someone is explaining even some old tech, they get lost in technical jargon. They just prioritize that over any of the details or useful terminology to actually explain what they did or how this thing relates or builds off something that already exists. Everyone's so worried about getting as many new tech keywords thrown out as they can in order to gatekeep others. Even when communicating to other devs-- I realize some of these sound like they're aimed at non-tech people. These are not out of place statements on Stack Overflow or in YouTube tutorials. "The Cloud is a revolutionary technology that you be will literally unable to comprehend unless you have these 20 certificates like me." But then it can just be summarized as saving and accessing a file on someone else's computer. "Typescript is a literally brand new technology built from scratch that you cannot begin to comprehend until you put 10k hours into it and become a master like me." But then it's just JavaScript with extra steps. Just like every other main front end language. They're all JavaScript plus X. "I built my own computer and then operating system from scratch. Why don't you try the same before suggesting your ideas." Well, you ordered pre-assembled parts from a list somebody else wrote and then you plugged them in with less steps than a Lego kit. And your OS from scratch was just a GUI checkbox installer than you clicked through that now has a thousand driver errors you neglected to mention. "I passed my FAANG leetcode interview because I'm a better programmer than you. If you can't pass a leetcode interview, are you even trying?" You passed your leetcode interview because you spent hundreds of hours memorizing every question and answer in order to recite it from memory under pressure. You also got lucky by getting a question you happened to memorize. Memorizing the answers before a test doesn't make you better at that subject. etc. I honestly can't find a way to explain this that's not negative. If someone can rephrase my points, I would be curious to hear a respectful counter argument.
raybb 4y ago
This website is powered by PyBlosxom, which describes itself as > "In PyBlosxom everything is a text file."
CommieBobDole 4y ago
It's interesting that the author writes this whole rant about the stupidity of describing cookies as "small text files" and how that's a ridiculous and incorrect abstraction, without realizing that cookies used to be exactly that, for a very long time, and putting them in a sqlite database is a relatively recent idea, especially at the time that this was written. I can imagine their rant upon finding a text that describes a telephone as a desktop device connected to the telephone network with a wire. "What kind of fool would describe a cellular data connection as a wire?" Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to look really silly.
- SkipperCat 4y ago
  True, and in a similar vein, we still have the floppy disk icon for "save to disk". In 20 years, most users will have never seen a floppy disk in their entire life. Still, the icon will remain.
  - johannes1234321 4y ago
    > Still, the icon will remain. Not really. The need to "save" is becoming less and less relevant. All changes are synced with the cloud and stored immediately. Even in some programming IDEs the need to save is a lot less common.
    - minsight 4y ago
      > All changes are synced with the cloud and stored immediately An optimistic outlook, to be sure. Many Dropbox, iCloud, AWS, etc. users who've been burned by their experiences might beg to differ.
    - cdbyr 4y ago
      I hope not - for projects with any complexity, knowing I’ve got a checkpoint means I don’t need to think hard about doing risky things. I wonder if Microsoft keeps stats on how many Office users use auto save.
  - elidendo 4y ago
falcolas 4y ago
And, frankly, what’s wrong with using office to open/edit a text file? It works well enough, even if it is akin to using a 747 to get the current weather conditions at altitude. (For the pilots, I know about pireps. That’s part of the analogy. ;)
- jbaber 4y ago
  Open, I guess. If you edit and try to save, you have to be careful not to add formatting characters.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    You do, but most editors can force text output when saving. It does take some diligence though.
    - ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
      There are a couple of text editors that add a BOM character at the start of files when you save. I've spent so much time helping young programmers debug their code trying to read/parse those files. They get an error about an unexpected character at the start of the file but when they open it they only see normal text so they assume they're doing something wrong.
      - falcolas 4y ago
        BOM is a Windows specification. Its stupid, and most non-Microsoft editors don’t do it any more, but it’s a known hazard when on Windows.
- ptx 4y ago
  The point the article is making is that the entire concept of "plain text" is unfamiliar to non-technical people, so explaining that cookies are "text files" doesn't help them understand cookies.
  - 4y ago
thayne 4y ago
Does a text file stop being a text file if it stored inside a zip file? Cookies are chunks of text, calling that a file, even if it is stored as part of another file doesn't seem wrong, if perhaps it isn't the best way to describe it.
- mr_mitm 4y ago
  That doesn't seem right. Following that logic, almost anything is a text file, because all data can be encoded as text and be stored in a file. A private key is a text file, a token is a text file, a host name is a text file, a password is a text file, a registry key is a text file ... the term loses all meaning.
kens 4y ago
The comments got me wondering about what a cookie can actually contain so I looked it up. A cookie can "include any US-ASCII character excluding a control character, Whitespace, double quotes, comma, semicolon, and backslash." Browsers typically restrict length to 4096 bytes. So "small text file" seems like a reasonable description. (The interesting distinction is text vs binary.) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Set-Cookie https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Se...
legitster 4y ago
To the contrary - when non-technical people hear the word "data" they think pure magic (even some technical people). Explaining that a cookie is really just a bit of text does seem like it is more likely to help explain the concept than the vague definition proffered by the author.
ricardobeat 4y ago
I did a little research recently, trying to figure out the origin of the Privacy Policy text a firm 'wrote' for our company website. It was straight copy & paste from what you'll find on half of all websites, with the earliest match going back to < 2000s - over 20 years old. GDPR/DPA made waves of updates at some point but large portions remain the same.
CAPSLOCKSSTUCK 4y ago
Typical post from a clueless author who doesn't understand the purpose of simplification. Ordinary people don't need to care about technical implementation details, and "small bits of text" gives a basic idea of the concept as far as it concerns them.
- klez 4y ago
  But that's the point of the rant. How does knowing that "cookies are small text files" help the user understanding what a cookie is and does? That's just an irrelevant implementation detail.
pushedx 4y ago
All of these definitions miss a very important point about cookies: A "cookie" is a piece of information sent to your browser by a website you visit, and your browser is required to send that information back to the website when you encounter that website's content (visible or hidden) throughout the web. Sending this information back to the website also informs the website of where you were on the web at that time. As of 2009 it was difficult to disable 3rd party cookies.
eternityforest 4y ago
How come we can't build sqlite type I functionality into filesystems? So many things would get a lot easier if there was an optimization for storing many tiny files without extreme SSD wear from deleting and recreating, or space amplification. A directory could be marked as database-like, and all your browser stuff could be regular old folders and files, syncable with SyncThing if they let you choose an accessible folder on mobile.

55 points by mr_mitm 4y ago

mmastrac 4y ago

For those of us that came from the early days of the web, they really were small text files - at least on windows.

rowls66 4y ago
The early days of the web were over by the time Microsoft got involved.

spywaregorilla 4y ago

Seems like a very uninteresting semantic argument

horsawlarway 4y ago

Welp - won't be reading this blog again. There's zero content of substance here, just a petty semantic argument and a generally degrading attitude towards users.

lgas 4y ago
In fairness it does have "shallow" right in the URL.

mode80 4y ago

FWIW, I once explained cookies this way to my non-technical co-founder of that day. I could see the clouds part and he confessed it removed all the magic and mysticism surrounding these web cookie things. It was like “ah, just small text files. Got it.”

dunham 4y ago
Yeah I could see that. A lot of people are not going to understand "data" as something concrete and "string" is going send them way off the path.

agwa 4y ago

Back in the day, cookies were delicious delicacies: https://i.imgur.com/YeGGd4B.png https://i.imgur.com/YeGGd4B.png https://www.squarefree.com/2004/07/24/cookies-are-no-longer-delicious-delicacies/ https://www.squarefree.com/2004/07/24/cookies-are-no-longer-...

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

'cookies.sqlite is most definitely not a "text file"' I have a mildly differing opinion. Are not all files, by default, text files? It is just the way the text inside them is structured that determines their actual format? edit: I might be opening a can of worms here, because I have a suspicion people will start pointing to extensions and whatnot.

hedora 4y ago
The internet predates sqlite. They used to be stored as a directory of .txt files.
- jwilk 4y ago
  Or more precisely: cookies (1994) predate SQLite (2000).
Tijdreiziger 4y ago
I think all files are, by default, binary files, and it’s the binary data inside them that determines their actual format. Try opening a non-text file (e.g. an executable) in a text editor — the editor will probably try to interpret the file as Latin-1 text, but this will just look like garbage, and can’t really be said to be a sane representation of the contents of that file.
- falcolas 4y ago
  To add to this, a text file is only special because it’s binary contents are restricted(ish) to a set of numbers an editor knows how to interpret into human-readable glyphs. Now then, if you want to discuss how most modern (non-executable) file formats are just zip files, then we can have more fun.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
krapp 4y ago
Text files map to character encodings that represent human language - they're meant to be written and read directly by human beings. While all text files are binary, not all binary files are text. A database file can contain text, but it isn't a text file in and of itself.

yakshaving_jgt 4y ago

Using text files as a mental model to describe cookies is useful. It might not be entirely correct, but it’s still useful. Discarding a constructive mental model like this for the sake of pedantry — especially when it makes the idea described harder to understand — is just stupid. And so, it follows that this article is just stupid.

xSxY3fj5gVCmvWE 4y ago
What exactly is the useful part, though? I mean, it's technically wrong. I don't see how this description improves layman understanding of cookies, much less to the point of offsetting the wrongness of it. In fact, you could argue "text files" is straight up confusing: you'd expect them to be human-readable, but they're not. They're machine-oriented data, often with several layers of encoding and serialization. The article was right at the time of writing, and it's even righter today.
- johannes1234321 4y ago
  > What exactly is the useful part, though? I mean, it's technically wrong. At least in Internet Explorer 3 and Netscape Navigator, cookies were stored as individual files in the file system. In that sense at some point in time it was somewhat correct. However the relevant part: On e in a time computer users knew files and we're working a lot with them. Operating systems like Windows 95 pushed files into the front (instead of first picking the program and in the program opening the thing they pushed Explorer to "explore the computer" and then finding the right program for the file) There a file was a understandable unit of data.
- Grimburger 4y ago
  > it's technically wrong What would you define a DNS TXT record as? Technically speaking. > you'd expect them to be human-readable, but they're not humans are sorta ok at making data readable https://i.imgur.com/ExMCVsl.png https://i.imgur.com/ExMCVsl.png
bgro 4y ago
Every time I look into the big new tech thing, or someone is explaining even some old tech, they get lost in technical jargon. They just prioritize that over any of the details or useful terminology to actually explain what they did or how this thing relates or builds off something that already exists. Everyone's so worried about getting as many new tech keywords thrown out as they can in order to gatekeep others. Even when communicating to other devs-- I realize some of these sound like they're aimed at non-tech people. These are not out of place statements on Stack Overflow or in YouTube tutorials. "The Cloud is a revolutionary technology that you be will literally unable to comprehend unless you have these 20 certificates like me." But then it can just be summarized as saving and accessing a file on someone else's computer. "Typescript is a literally brand new technology built from scratch that you cannot begin to comprehend until you put 10k hours into it and become a master like me." But then it's just JavaScript with extra steps. Just like every other main front end language. They're all JavaScript plus X. "I built my own computer and then operating system from scratch. Why don't you try the same before suggesting your ideas." Well, you ordered pre-assembled parts from a list somebody else wrote and then you plugged them in with less steps than a Lego kit. And your OS from scratch was just a GUI checkbox installer than you clicked through that now has a thousand driver errors you neglected to mention. "I passed my FAANG leetcode interview because I'm a better programmer than you. If you can't pass a leetcode interview, are you even trying?" You passed your leetcode interview because you spent hundreds of hours memorizing every question and answer in order to recite it from memory under pressure. You also got lucky by getting a question you happened to memorize. Memorizing the answers before a test doesn't make you better at that subject. etc. I honestly can't find a way to explain this that's not negative. If someone can rephrase my points, I would be curious to hear a respectful counter argument.

raybb 4y ago

This website is powered by PyBlosxom, which describes itself as > "In PyBlosxom everything is a text file."

CommieBobDole 4y ago

It's interesting that the author writes this whole rant about the stupidity of describing cookies as "small text files" and how that's a ridiculous and incorrect abstraction, without realizing that cookies used to be exactly that, for a very long time, and putting them in a sqlite database is a relatively recent idea, especially at the time that this was written. I can imagine their rant upon finding a text that describes a telephone as a desktop device connected to the telephone network with a wire. "What kind of fool would describe a cellular data connection as a wire?" Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to look really silly.

SkipperCat 4y ago
True, and in a similar vein, we still have the floppy disk icon for "save to disk". In 20 years, most users will have never seen a floppy disk in their entire life. Still, the icon will remain.
- johannes1234321 4y ago
  > Still, the icon will remain. Not really. The need to "save" is becoming less and less relevant. All changes are synced with the cloud and stored immediately. Even in some programming IDEs the need to save is a lot less common.
  - minsight 4y ago
    > All changes are synced with the cloud and stored immediately An optimistic outlook, to be sure. Many Dropbox, iCloud, AWS, etc. users who've been burned by their experiences might beg to differ.
  - cdbyr 4y ago
    I hope not - for projects with any complexity, knowing I’ve got a checkpoint means I don’t need to think hard about doing risky things. I wonder if Microsoft keeps stats on how many Office users use auto save.
- elidendo 4y ago

falcolas 4y ago

And, frankly, what’s wrong with using office to open/edit a text file? It works well enough, even if it is akin to using a 747 to get the current weather conditions at altitude. (For the pilots, I know about pireps. That’s part of the analogy. ;)

jbaber 4y ago
Open, I guess. If you edit and try to save, you have to be careful not to add formatting characters.
- falcolas 4y ago
  You do, but most editors can force text output when saving. It does take some diligence though.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
    There are a couple of text editors that add a BOM character at the start of files when you save. I've spent so much time helping young programmers debug their code trying to read/parse those files. They get an error about an unexpected character at the start of the file but when they open it they only see normal text so they assume they're doing something wrong.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      BOM is a Windows specification. Its stupid, and most non-Microsoft editors don’t do it any more, but it’s a known hazard when on Windows.
ptx 4y ago
The point the article is making is that the entire concept of "plain text" is unfamiliar to non-technical people, so explaining that cookies are "text files" doesn't help them understand cookies.
- 4y ago

thayne 4y ago

Does a text file stop being a text file if it stored inside a zip file? Cookies are chunks of text, calling that a file, even if it is stored as part of another file doesn't seem wrong, if perhaps it isn't the best way to describe it.

mr_mitm 4y ago
That doesn't seem right. Following that logic, almost anything is a text file, because all data can be encoded as text and be stored in a file. A private key is a text file, a token is a text file, a host name is a text file, a password is a text file, a registry key is a text file ... the term loses all meaning.

kens 4y ago

The comments got me wondering about what a cookie can actually contain so I looked it up. A cookie can "include any US-ASCII character excluding a control character, Whitespace, double quotes, comma, semicolon, and backslash." Browsers typically restrict length to 4096 bytes. So "small text file" seems like a reasonable description. (The interesting distinction is text vs binary.) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Set-Cookie https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Se...

legitster 4y ago

To the contrary - when non-technical people hear the word "data" they think pure magic (even some technical people). Explaining that a cookie is really just a bit of text does seem like it is more likely to help explain the concept than the vague definition proffered by the author.

ricardobeat 4y ago

I did a little research recently, trying to figure out the origin of the Privacy Policy text a firm 'wrote' for our company website. It was straight copy & paste from what you'll find on half of all websites, with the earliest match going back to < 2000s - over 20 years old. GDPR/DPA made waves of updates at some point but large portions remain the same.

CAPSLOCKSSTUCK 4y ago

Typical post from a clueless author who doesn't understand the purpose of simplification. Ordinary people don't need to care about technical implementation details, and "small bits of text" gives a basic idea of the concept as far as it concerns them.

klez 4y ago
But that's the point of the rant. How does knowing that "cookies are small text files" help the user understanding what a cookie is and does? That's just an irrelevant implementation detail.

pushedx 4y ago

All of these definitions miss a very important point about cookies: A "cookie" is a piece of information sent to your browser by a website you visit, and your browser is required to send that information back to the website when you encounter that website's content (visible or hidden) throughout the web. Sending this information back to the website also informs the website of where you were on the web at that time. As of 2009 it was difficult to disable 3rd party cookies.

eternityforest 4y ago

How come we can't build sqlite type I functionality into filesystems? So many things would get a lot easier if there was an optimization for storing many tiny files without extreme SSD wear from deleting and recreating, or space amplification. A directory could be marked as database-like, and all your browser stuff could be regular old folders and files, syncable with SyncThing if they let you choose an accessible folder on mobile.