Printing RFCs
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Tomasino recently wrote[1] about the joy of reading old RFCs, which brought back
happy memories for me.
When I was a student, we were allocated a particular printing quota each
semester. You could print up to however many hundred pages for free, and if you
wanted to do any more than that, you had to pay for more credit. The quota was
renewed each semester, and any unused surplus was simply lost rather than being
rolled over or paid out.
My course work actually required very little printing, so I always had a hefty
surplus, so twice a year I would take the opportunity to print off whatever very
large but interesting nerdy things I could find on the internet. This sometimes
included RFCs. I know for a fact that I printed the SMTP and IMAP RFCs, and had
them cheaply spiral bound with clear plastic covers at the university print
shop. I would read them on the almost hour long train ride I took into the city
and back each day. Possibly I printed some others as well, but the email ones
are the ones I'm sure about.
Many RFCs are surprisingly readable, and if you've been mucking around with
programming and networking for a few years you will probably be able to learn a
thing or two about how some of the services you use every day work under the
hood, without too much trouble.
I like them because they make it clear how simple, at the end of the day, a lot
of the internet is. Obviously the devil is in the details, but for many
purposes, the internet is just computers sending ASCII text to one another, one
line at a time, in very stilted, formal conversations. They often literally say
HELO and BYE to each other. The scripts for these conversations were written,
at least in the early days, by small groups of people just trying to figure out
something that seemed like it would work well at the time, often without any
grand plans or visions. There's a very humble, human feel to a lot of this
early net stuff. Check it out sometime.
[1]
gopher://sdf.org:70/1/users/tomasino/phlog/20180301-1436
