You Can Try Out The Web Browser from 30 Years Ago!
Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, and in June of this year (2021) he sold the original source code as an NFT — the most succinct article I found on this news event was by Toolbox, linked here.
But that same source code has been publicly available for decades; Tim Berners Lee likened this NFT to selling an autographed copy of a book. Click this link to launch the WorldWideWeb rebuild, or read about the history directly from the source:
Not sure what to do? One of the key developers in this five-day effort provided a demo.
The Significance
I wanted to start a new series in which I compared source code to art — but is source code really art? Such a comparison may be a little bit like describing an ancient weapon as art; the Chinese fire lance would make for a fascinating museum exhibition, and it was highly significant in world history, but it was valuable for its function. Similarly, a cynical person might describe this old WorldWideWeb implementation as no more relevant than a spear, a horse carriage, or a VHS player.
If I were to write about some modern open source technology, though, it would be a moving target. My own team’s code base changes by a few hundred lines every few weeks. The official PHP-src Github was committed to twice yesterday…and that is just the main branch.
So what better place to start, than with source code that sold for millions of dollars? Tim Berners Lee did not make his invention in a vacuum (ARPANET comes to mind as a predecessor), but he invented HTTP and HTML. This and his other contributions, many would argue, make him the true inventor of the World Wide Web.
You can read all the source code via a hyperlink on the CERN page. I was partially inspired by various articles on famous code snippets, but in cases like this I think the entire code base is famous. If I wanted code snippets, I would probably have better luck writing about infamous bugs that led to huge financial failures and massive tragedies…that is a darker place this series may take me.
I suppose I could screenshot a random code snippet for you, this time from http.c, but I had more luck reading their explanation of how they “revived” the code base.
The Rebuilding Process
In Remy Sharp’s own words, the final product was a little bit more like a simulation. They were at the spot where the world wide web was first invented. They had a team member on hand who had worked with Tim Berners Lee originally. But what they did not do was emulate the old environment and then run that in the browser. This is because, for reasons I do not understand, they were unable to figure out how to compile or run the source code.
So they used React; obviously Tim Berners Lee did not have access to React when he first created this. They used intentionally low resolution, which reminds me a little bit of viral Game of Thrones parodies that add static to make it look like a 1990s show. What they basically did was researched how the product originally felt and acted, then used modern web tools to mock it up.
I really enjoyed reading Remy Sharp’s journal entries on the process, which are also on the CERN page. He does not condescend. He does not turn too much to jargon. Instead, he writes a very humble sort of log that explains the significance of what they did and how they did it, without romanticizing it too much but while still providing the reader with a glimpse into their day-to-day process. It is the kind of thing that makes you want to code something, without having to exaggerate success the way a Hollywood film would.
Closing Thoughts: Programming as Poetry
I searched up the video above because I had originally planned on making fun of it. I used to dislike when people compared programming to poetry. Poetry is like poetry.
But actually, this is one of the best TEDx talks I have ever found and I am glad I did. It is inspiring. She describes programming as the world between English and mathematics she found, the world within a computer, and then goes on to tell stories of teaching young girls to code. It reawakens the childlike wonder in its audience, that drive and that curiosity that existed before the segmentation faults and the demo failures.
Her online audience, anyway. The live audience here was not the best.
The first implementation of the World Wide Web served its purpose. We do not use it anymore. It is more than 30 years old, so it has come into the news again. Some people criticize Tim Berners Lee’s attempt to profit from his invention. Others applaud him and say he would have made billions if he had patented his work in the first place. According to the Toolbox article, he had planned to donate the proceeds to charity (it is possible he now already has).
I do not know if it has to be said, but we do still use the World Wide Web. We use technology that this original work inspired, and will use it for some time until it becomes obsolete or we choose to take a different direction.
Maybe in the future, the source code for Bitcoin will go down into the history books, or the source code for React Native. People today still go to considerable lengths to learn as much as they can about the Final Fantasy VI source code, and that came out decades ago.
It is kind of like Tim Berners Lee was a musician. He performed a world-famous guitar solo. The guitar does not work anymore, but people were still willing to buy it because of its historical significance. The guitar was smashed into pieces after he did the solo. Okay, the metaphor is breaking…
…but even if I do not necessarily think of source code as art, I do think it is a part of history. By researching and writing about the people behind it, and the impact, we get to let source code tell a story.
Even if I do not understand it, thank goodness people like Remy Sharp do.
