I like figuring out even or somehow particularly aligned numbers and dates to celebrate. Here’s another one: today marks the day when httpget 0.1 was released in 1996.

httpget 0.1 was a tiny command line tool written by Rafael Sagula. It was less than 300 lines of C code. (Today, the product code is 173,000 lines!)

I found httpget just days after it was released when I was searching for a tool to use for downloading currency rates with from an HTTP site. This was the time before Google existed so I assume I used Altavista or something. I can’t remember actually.

The httpget source code was my initial step into the HTTP world. In many ways, reading that code opened my eyes.

Of course there was some issues with the code that I can’t remember any longer, but I very soon sent Rafael my first patches to improve it. A few weeks later I took over maintenance of the little tool. The rest is documented elsewhere. The oldest httpget source code I still have around is httpget 1.3, released sometime between April and August 1997.

I have since been working with HTTP pretty much daily. For twenty-five years.

If someone tries to tell you that HTTP is an easy or simple protocol, don’t believe them.