[{"_1":2,"_30":-5,"_31":-5},"loaderData",{"_3":4},"routes/__layout/tag.$name",{"_5":6,"_7":8},"tagName","http","posts",[9],{"_10":11,"_12":13,"_14":15,"_16":17,"_18":19,"_20":21,"_22":23,"_24":-5,"_25":-5,"_26":27,"_28":29},"id",1363,"title","HTTP Conversation Codes","excerpt","I mapped HTTP status codes to workplace conversation snippets. \"404: I have no idea what you're talking about.\" \"502: Bob is refusing to work with me on this.\" Now available as a poster. Note how the spec reveals programmers always blame the client.","body","\n

\nUpdate: Welcome, hackers! You can now buy this table as a super-cute poster! Thanks to Nimbus for turning this around so fast :-)\n

\n\n

So at lunch today myself, Isaac and a bunch of other co-workers who would probably prefer to remain nameless were having one of those free-flowing, ultra-nerdy conversations that you only get when you concentrate a bunch of incredibly technical people in one place and then prevent them, through social convention, from talking about work. These are pretty much a daily occurrence at Yahoo! at lunch time.\n\n

The conversation somehow turned -- I think it was Isaac's idea, so perhaps he can illuminate us as to his inspiration -- to the idea of simplifying conversation by referring to common workplace situations by their equivalent HTTP status codes. This turned out to be incredibly easy, and possibly even useful.\n\n

For the non-nerdy, a brief explanation: HTTP is the language your web browser uses to speak to web servers to request your pages. It's how the web server knows which content (such as a web page) you want to see. This happens before HTML or any other language gets involved, and it's used whether the content you're requesting is a web page, a picture, a movie or a file to download. The status codes are how the web server tells your browser (aka your client) roughly how things went -- so your browser knows whether the page you're seeing is the page you asked for, or whether it's an error page, or any number of other things.\n\n

This maps pretty well to a conversation between a programmer and a normal person. The normal person -- a manager, or a product person, or a marketroid -- wants something from the programmer, and the programmer needs to tell them what's going on, and often they can't just do that by giving them exactly what they asked for. And since programmers are notably bad at communicating with normal people but notably good at being very accurate about codes, this translation guide can help.\n\n

I'm not sure how often we will end up actually using these in real life -- although people occasionally use 404 already, and I am absolutely positive that 502 is going to come in handy -- but they at the very least serve as a very quick way of reminding you what the codes mean, if you happen to be building a web service. And if you're me, you're building a new web service every other bloody day, because that's all they want these days, another goddamn web service. Ahem.\n\n

Without further ado:\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Code	Status	Conversational Equivalent
1xx: Informational\n
100	Continue	Uh-huh...
101	Switching Protocols	Let's take this offline
2xx: Successful
200	OK	OK
201	Created	I wrote you an email about that
202	Accepted	If you say so.
203	Non-Authoritative Information	The last I heard...
204	No Content	Mmm.
205	Reset Content	Forget what Bob told you
206	Partial Content	All I know is...
3xx: Redirection
300	Multiple Choices	You can get that from Bob, or John, or Sue
301	Moved Permanently	That's Bob's job
302	Found	Bob is taking care of that for me today
303	See Other	You should ask Bob today, but I'll know tomorrow (not well understood by clients)
304	Not Modified	It's the same as it was when you asked me 5 minutes ago
305	Use Proxy	You should ask my boss
306	deprecated	N/A
307	Temporary Redirect	Ask Bob about that
4xx: Client error
400	Bad request	Whaaa?
401	Unauthorized	You're not allowed to know that.
402	Payment Required	Maybe a twenty would refresh my memory...
403	Forbidden	It's a secret.
404	Not Found	I have no idea what you're talking about.
405	Method not allowed	gasp of shock
406	Not Acceptable	Maybe when you're older
407	Proxy Authentication Required	You need to file a bug about that
408	Request Timeout	You still there?
409	Conflict	I'm working on it right now; ask me later
410	Gone	I don't know, and I don't care.
411	Length Required	Is this gonna take long?
412	Precondition Failed	You asked me not to tell you if it was bad news.
413	Request Entity Too Large	Woah, woah, this is too much detail.
414	Request URI Too Long	By the time you finished asking the question I forgot what it was about
415	Unsupported Media Type	Speak English!
416	Requested Range Not Satisfiable	That's all I know
417	Expectation Failed	You're not gonna like this
5xx: Server error
500	Internal Server Error	drooling from side of mouth
501	Not Implemented	Uh, yeah, about that...
502	Bad Gateway	Bob is refusing to work with me on this.
503	Service Unavailable	I am way too busy to deal with your shit

\n\n

Interesting side note: even at the protocol level, the programmer's expectation that it is nearly always the client's fault and hardly ever the programmer's fault is obvious.\n\n

These codes and their definitions are based on the HTTP 1.1 specification. We welcome suggestions for further refinement.","updated",["D",1227180006000],"created",["D",1227128668000],"codename","http_conversation_codes","legacy_id","thumbnailUrl","published",["D",1227180005000],"draft",false,"actionData","errors"]

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