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i1436 | |
iMarch 01st, 2018 | |
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i | |
iI've been geeking out hard all day about RFCs. Someone on Mastodon | |
iposted about how CSV as a format was never needed and only came | |
iinto existence because people at IBM and Bell Labs never read | |
iRFC20 [0], the definition of ASCII. ASCII has in its character set | |
ifields for separating ... fields, and groups and rows. 4 levels of | |
iheirarchy, to be exact. With those we never needed to worry about | |
iproperly quoting stuff in CSV! | |
i | |
iMind. Blown. | |
i | |
iSo I tore through it (it's a short RFC) and it was a fascinating | |
iwindow into the past. I felt exactly as I had as a kid when I saw | |
ithe Declaration of Independence. This was a marker in history, | |
ia relic of communication. The old RFCs feel like that to me. | |
i | |
iI know I felt that way when I read RFC1436: The Internet Gopher | |
iProtocol [1]. I guess RFCs are cool things to go read for fun. | |
iHuh, who knew? | |
i | |
iAnyway, to kind-of "celebrate" my nerdy excitement, I'm going to | |
iadopt using 1436 as a synonym for Gopher. Now you know what I'm | |
ireferring to if you ever see that in the future. Maybe I'll link | |
iback here the first couple times... yeah. | |
i | |
iJoin me in 1436ing! | |
i | |
[0] RFC 20 - ASCII format for Network Interchange | |
[1] RFC 1436 - The Internet Gopher Protocol |