3 ms·

This is the sort of self-important technorant that I've come to despise in tech news. It is another example of a blogger pandering to readers' absurd addiction

This is the sort of self-important technorant that I've come to despise in tech news. It is another example of a blogger pandering to readers' absurd addiction with outrage. HTTP/2.0 is not an outrage. It is imperfect, just as HTTP/1.1 is imperfect and ill-suited to today's rich web applications that were not envisioned at its inception. [edit] It's a bit ironic that this story was delivered to many of us (via Hacker News) over SPDY--HTTP/2.0's dominant source of inspiration.

MatthewWilkes 12y ago
Considering phk works as a developer for a very popular HTTP based application (Varnish) and contributed to competing specs for HTTP2 he's hardly a pandering blogger. He's an expert annoyed that the improvements in standards in his field are absurdly slow and perfectly entitled to voice his ire.
- acaloiar 12y ago
  He is no doubt perfectly entitled to rant. I'm also fairly confident that phk has contributed to more important projects vital to the tech ecosystem than I ever will. I simply argue that there are more constructive and productive ways to go about pointing out a protocol's flaws. Phk has had issues with the process for quite some time, and I feel that his embitterment about the process has jaded his view of the protocol. Phk on SPDY/HTTP/2.0 http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2014AprJun/0815.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2014AprJun/...
  - jerf 12y ago
    "I simply argue that there are more constructive and productive ways to go about pointing out a protocol's flaws." Which he has done: https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/http20.html https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/http20.html It's a pet peeve of mine when people just fling this sort of accusation about as if every word-count limited column isn't any good unless it's 20 times longer and basically includes half of Wikipedia transitively. It's a column in a trade magazine. There isn't a place for a detailed technical discussion there, so complaining that there isn't one is complaining about something that can't be fixed. Besides, cards on the table, I think he's basically correct, cynicism and all here. Sometimes the right answer is to just say no, and failure to say no is not good thing when that is what is called for.
    - youngtaff 12y ago
      BTW - that article is two and half years old and there's been a fair amount of work on HTTP/2 since then
    - acaloiar 12y ago
      "Which he has done: https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/http20.html" https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/http20.html" You are highlighting my point. The arguments made here are far more pragmatic. My qualms are with how his points are made in the original blog post, not with what points he is making; many of which are quite valid. With that said, the totality of his argument allows the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Which in my opinion is an invariably flawed position.
- lmm 12y ago
  Oh, it's this guy again? He already stirs up a bunch of outrage (and zero useful contribution) every year like clockwork by ranting about build systems. Is he "entitled" to a rant? Sure. But he should surely have realised by now that nothing positive will come of it, and there are better ways to actually improve things.
  - frankzinger 12y ago
    His posts to the IETF HTTP WG mailing list: https://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Public/search?hdr-1-name=from&hdr-1-query=poul-henning%20kamp&index-grp=Public_FULL&index-type=t&type-index=ietf-http-wg&resultsperpage=20&sortby=date&page=1 https://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Public/search?hdr-1-name=from... Results : 889 He's not just some guy who stirs up a bunch of outrage (and zero useful contribution) every year, regardless of what you may think of his arguments.
tobz 12y ago
While the technical validity/integrity of HTTP/2.0 is certainly up for debate, there's a bigger issue here, and phk certainly isn't the first to talk about: the rush by the IETF to basically polish SPDY into HTTP/2.0. To me, that's the most fascinating, and entirely relevant (read: not self-serving or self-important) piece of what the author is talking about.
- youngtaff 12y ago
  SPDY was proven to be working in the wild, and others such as Twitter and Facebook had both adopted it. PHK wanted to do the sort of ground up work that would have taken ten years rather than 3.
  - tobz 12y ago
    But his point, at least the way it comes across to me, is that the IETF simply jumped on the bandwagon of SPDY and fast tracked turning it into HTTP/2.0. Precisely the thing that you wouldn't expect a standards committee to do, because developing solid standards is hard. Instead of spending 10 hypothetical years of their own time, doing the ground up work, they spent a small portion on HTTP/2.0. That portion is, in fact, smaller than the time spent on SPDY overall. So, how much standards-ing style work did they do? How much actual forethought was given besides making SPDY acceptable enough for a draft? That's my takeaway.
    - parasubvert 12y ago
      HTTP/2 is not SPDY. They're not compatible. The IETF mailing list archives are open if you'd like to see what 3 years of standardsing looks like. You can also go to the chair's blog (mnot.net) to read the evolution. Or Roy Fielding's presentations on Waka which were one of the early (2002) catalysts among the IETF-orbiters that lead to HTTP/2. http://gbiv.com/protocols/waka/200211_fielding_apachecon.ppt http://gbiv.com/protocols/waka/200211_fielding_apachecon.ppt Ultimately Waka was already a decade late, Google had SPDY which had some similarities and was already deployed, and people didn't want to wait another decade to build something no one might adopt. There were aspects of SPDY that needed changing to make it a true protocol standard rather than just a shared library, and a few features that out of rough consensus were changed. That's how successful standards processes actually work - codifying what's already working, implemented in the field. Implementing a standard no one uses? See Atompub. See XHTML2.
youngtaff 12y ago
Yeh, I've heard PHK give this rant in person under the guise of HTP/2 and performance. The really annoying thing about his rant is the number of assertions he makes without backing them up with data

MatthewWilkes 12y ago

Considering phk works as a developer for a very popular HTTP based application (Varnish) and contributed to competing specs for HTTP2 he's hardly a pandering blogger. He's an expert annoyed that the improvements in standards in his field are absurdly slow and perfectly entitled to voice his ire.

acaloiar 12y ago
He is no doubt perfectly entitled to rant. I'm also fairly confident that phk has contributed to more important projects vital to the tech ecosystem than I ever will. I simply argue that there are more constructive and productive ways to go about pointing out a protocol's flaws. Phk has had issues with the process for quite some time, and I feel that his embitterment about the process has jaded his view of the protocol. Phk on SPDY/HTTP/2.0 http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2014AprJun/0815.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2014AprJun/...
- jerf 12y ago
  "I simply argue that there are more constructive and productive ways to go about pointing out a protocol's flaws." Which he has done: https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/http20.html https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/http20.html It's a pet peeve of mine when people just fling this sort of accusation about as if every word-count limited column isn't any good unless it's 20 times longer and basically includes half of Wikipedia transitively. It's a column in a trade magazine. There isn't a place for a detailed technical discussion there, so complaining that there isn't one is complaining about something that can't be fixed. Besides, cards on the table, I think he's basically correct, cynicism and all here. Sometimes the right answer is to just say no, and failure to say no is not good thing when that is what is called for.
  - youngtaff 12y ago
    BTW - that article is two and half years old and there's been a fair amount of work on HTTP/2 since then
  - acaloiar 12y ago
    "Which he has done: https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/http20.html" https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/http20.html" You are highlighting my point. The arguments made here are far more pragmatic. My qualms are with how his points are made in the original blog post, not with what points he is making; many of which are quite valid. With that said, the totality of his argument allows the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Which in my opinion is an invariably flawed position.
lmm 12y ago
Oh, it's this guy again? He already stirs up a bunch of outrage (and zero useful contribution) every year like clockwork by ranting about build systems. Is he "entitled" to a rant? Sure. But he should surely have realised by now that nothing positive will come of it, and there are better ways to actually improve things.
- frankzinger 12y ago
  His posts to the IETF HTTP WG mailing list: https://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Public/search?hdr-1-name=from&hdr-1-query=poul-henning%20kamp&index-grp=Public_FULL&index-type=t&type-index=ietf-http-wg&resultsperpage=20&sortby=date&page=1 https://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Public/search?hdr-1-name=from... Results : 889 He's not just some guy who stirs up a bunch of outrage (and zero useful contribution) every year, regardless of what you may think of his arguments.

tobz 12y ago

While the technical validity/integrity of HTTP/2.0 is certainly up for debate, there's a bigger issue here, and phk certainly isn't the first to talk about: the rush by the IETF to basically polish SPDY into HTTP/2.0. To me, that's the most fascinating, and entirely relevant (read: not self-serving or self-important) piece of what the author is talking about.

youngtaff 12y ago
SPDY was proven to be working in the wild, and others such as Twitter and Facebook had both adopted it. PHK wanted to do the sort of ground up work that would have taken ten years rather than 3.
- tobz 12y ago
  But his point, at least the way it comes across to me, is that the IETF simply jumped on the bandwagon of SPDY and fast tracked turning it into HTTP/2.0. Precisely the thing that you wouldn't expect a standards committee to do, because developing solid standards is hard. Instead of spending 10 hypothetical years of their own time, doing the ground up work, they spent a small portion on HTTP/2.0. That portion is, in fact, smaller than the time spent on SPDY overall. So, how much standards-ing style work did they do? How much actual forethought was given besides making SPDY acceptable enough for a draft? That's my takeaway.
  - parasubvert 12y ago
    HTTP/2 is not SPDY. They're not compatible. The IETF mailing list archives are open if you'd like to see what 3 years of standardsing looks like. You can also go to the chair's blog (mnot.net) to read the evolution. Or Roy Fielding's presentations on Waka which were one of the early (2002) catalysts among the IETF-orbiters that lead to HTTP/2. http://gbiv.com/protocols/waka/200211_fielding_apachecon.ppt http://gbiv.com/protocols/waka/200211_fielding_apachecon.ppt Ultimately Waka was already a decade late, Google had SPDY which had some similarities and was already deployed, and people didn't want to wait another decade to build something no one might adopt. There were aspects of SPDY that needed changing to make it a true protocol standard rather than just a shared library, and a few features that out of rough consensus were changed. That's how successful standards processes actually work - codifying what's already working, implemented in the field. Implementing a standard no one uses? See Atompub. See XHTML2.

youngtaff 12y ago

Yeh, I've heard PHK give this rant in person under the guise of HTP/2 and performance. The really annoying thing about his rant is the number of assertions he makes without backing them up with data