[Discuss] A Web Server is No Longer a Web Server

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Rich Pieri)]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2025 08:23:21 -0500
markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:

> Http was originally a document format and a file transfer protocol.
> The idea that it could be a dynamic page generation engine and
> eventually a working RPC mechanism (SOAP, REST, etc) came afterward.

I think you're conflating HTML, the document format, with HTTP, the
transport protocol. HTML has changed drastically over 4 major versions,
but HTTP remains largely the same. The changes from v0.9/1.0 to v2 to
v3 mostly are protocol optimization (v2) and use of QUIC instead of TCP
(v3). HTTP is content agnostic, and it addresses common problems with
earlier protocols like FTP and Gopher, which are major factors why it's
become ubiquitous.

Dynamic pages, SOAP, REST and friends are not HTTP. They are content
rendered by the browser, which may be HTML or may be some other
mechanism such as WebAssembly, or handled by an application server.

-- 
\m/ (--) \m/