WeAreDevelopers Logo WeAreDevelopers
Sign in
For You LIVE
World Congress 2023 • Sep 27, 2023

Brewing Tea over the Internet

Imran Nazar

To mock HTTP's chaotic architectural bloat, engineers drafted a joke protocol for brewing coffee. Discover the hilarious history and real networking lessons behind the "418 I'm a teapot" error.

Pause
Mute Enter Fullscreen
#1 about 3 min

The history and evolution of early HTTP drafts

The initial text-based HTTP protocol lacked paths and error codes.

#2 about 3 min

Standardizing the HTTP protocol and adding response headers

New verbs, paths, and status codes transformed HTTP into a programmatic protocol.

#3 about 4 min

Reusing email software standards for HTTP file uploads

The inclusion of email MIME types enabled multipart form data and file attachments over HTTP.

#4 about 4 min

The coffee pot control protocol and brew verb

An April Fools internet standard formalized ridiculous extensions to HTTP network requests.

#5 about 2 min

The origin of the HTTP 418 teapot error

The introduction of the teapot error code became a beloved engineering community joke.

#6 about 2 min

Extending the coffee protocol for tea appliance hardware

The coffee protocol was eventually modified to support tea brewing with selection and rejection codes.

#7 about 2 min

REST principles and inappropriate HTTP response status codes

Using document verbs for database rows contrasts with returning success codes for internal errors.

#8 about 3 min

Reviewing other humorous internet engineering standard network RFCs

Joke standards mock concepts like firewall intention checking and extreme physical packet transport.

#9 about 2 min

Physical hardware implementations of the coffee appliance protocol

Hackathon projects have successfully built working appliances driven by the humorous protocol.

#10 about 3 min

Audience questions on avian carriers and binary HTTP

Discussions explore carrier pigeon packet loss mechanics and binary protocol formats.

Matching moments

2:59 min

Designing HTTP and HTML for familiar document sharing

Tim Berners-Lee · World Congress 2023

2:59 min

Representational state transfer and the adoption of HTTP verbs

James Seconde · World Congress 2023

35 sec

Core principles of the REST architectural style

Shweta Palande · LIVE

1:42 min

Questions on HTTP QUERY and AI standard timelines

Christian Liebel Christian Liebel · World Congress 2026 Europe

6:30 min

Deprecating old email protocols and preserving niche online communities

Chris Heilmann Chris Heilmann +2 · LIVE

2:55 min

Historical evolution from remote procedure calls to modern protocols

Alexis Yushin Alexis Yushin · World Congress 2024

More from World Congress 2023

The year 3000, a brief history of Web Development thumbnail
25:30
over 2 years ago

The year 3000, a brief history of Web Development

Lorenzo Pieri

Demografie nutzen um jedem Bewerber das passende Angebot zu machen! thumbnail
8:52
almost 3 years ago

Demografie nutzen um jedem Bewerber das passende Angebot zu machen!

Nathalie Gierth

Guided Memory Management: Rust's Ownership Model thumbnail
0:18
almost 3 years ago

Guided Memory Management: Rust's Ownership Model

Stefan Baumgartner

Passwordless future: WebAuthn and Passkeys in practice thumbnail
32:32
almost 3 years ago

Passwordless future: WebAuthn and Passkeys in practice

Clemens Hübner

External Secrets Operator: the secrets management toolbox for self-sufficient teams thumbnail
30:07
almost 3 years ago

External Secrets Operator: the secrets management toolbox for self-sufficient teams

Moritz Johner

Building Reliable Serverless Applications with AWS CDK and Testing thumbnail
25:18
almost 3 years ago

Building Reliable Serverless Applications with AWS CDK and Testing

Raphael Manke

Upcoming sessions on this topic

Open session

What I Got Wrong Shipping an MCP Server for Live Infrastructure

  • Pritesh Kiri

    Harness

    Developer Relations Engineer

Open session

How We Cut Our API's p99 Latency from Minutes to Under a Second

  • Deepak Agrawal

    Atlassian

    Principal Software Engineer

Open session

Shipping MCP to Real Users: Scaling, Auth, and the PII Leak You Didn't See Coming

  • Hadar Geva

    Myop

    CTO & Co-founder

Open session

Build a Zero-Cost AI Agent in Your Browser

  • Aishwarya Mathuria

    Adobe

    Computer Scientist

  • Nishant Thakur

    Adobe

    Senior Computer Scientist

Open session

ULTRON: Your Agent Has No Hands - Real-Time Voice, MCP, and Ten Phones on Stage

  • Sagar Tamang

    Two Spoon Technologies

    AI Engineer

Open session

React Under Fire: Rendering Performance for Streaming Agent UIs

  • Abhirupa Mitra

    Slack

    Senior Member of Technical Staff

Related videos

Awful APIs: A History Lesson in Industry Mistakes and Mishaps thumbnail
28:55
World Congress 2023 • about 3 years ago

Awful APIs: A History Lesson in Industry Mistakes and Mishaps

James Seconde

The State Of The Web thumbnail
43:11
World Congress 2021 • over 5 years ago

The State Of The Web

Jeremy Keith

API = Some REST and HTTP, right? RIGHT?! thumbnail
29:58
World Congress 2026 North America • 20 days ago

API = Some REST and HTTP, right? RIGHT?!

Rustam Mehmandarov

What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition thumbnail
31:45
World Congress 2026 Europe • 3 months ago

What’s New in Web? 2026 Edition

Christian Liebel

An Opinionated Guide to Bulletproof APIs thumbnail
27:13
World Congress 2026 Europe • 3 months ago

An Opinionated Guide to Bulletproof APIs

Rustam Mehmandarov

WeAreDevelopers LIVE – Guten TAG, Web Standards, AI and more thumbnail
1:05:27
LIVE • 10 months ago

WeAreDevelopers LIVE – Guten TAG, Web Standards, AI and more

Chris Heilmann, Daniel Cranney, Christian Liebel

Related articles

From learning to earning

Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.