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by mlhpdx 374 days ago
Yes, but it won’t be easy. Heavy investment has gone into HTTP and we have great tooling and support for it as a result. That has a lot of benefits and I’m glad for it. But there is a cost.

HTTP is a blunt hammer and computing sometimes needs a scalpel. Lighter, more efficient protocols are important, as QUIC and WireGuard have proven.
1 comments
Mister_Snuggles 374 days ago
To play devil's advocate, shoving everything into HTTP/HTTPS also allowed a ton of innovation.

Would video streaming sites (Youtube, Vimeo, etc) ever have gotten off the ground if they had to go to IANA to get a port number assigned, then wait for browsers to support the new protocol that runs over the new port, etc? Probably not to be honest. Or maybe browsers would just let JavaScript connect to any port, which would be terrifying from a security standpoint.

I'm firmly convinced that shoving everything into HTTP/HTTPS was a mistake. But I'm also willing to acknowledge that it's probably the least-worst solution to a bunch of problems.

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AnthonyMouse 374 days ago
> Or maybe browsers would just let JavaScript connect to any port, which would be terrifying from a security standpoint.

Isn't this just WebRTC?

Also, why does everything have to be done in a browser? We're talking about name resolution. That's supposed to be done by the OS regardless so you don't have a thousand separate configuration options to change if you want to change your DNS server.

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mlhpdx 374 days ago
Absolutely. The investment in HTTP means I can setup a website or API in a few clicks and pay nothing (or nearly so) for it. That has made it possible for me to try many, many things over the years. It’s fabulous.

I would very much like to see that same freedom to innovate when using other protocols.

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