The Network That No One Promised a Future

It all started with ARPANET, an experimental project of the US Department of Defense in 1969. Its goal was to try to transmit data continuously, but in packets, like modern messengers. Programmers wrote in assembler and C, manually configured connections and tested the first network protocols. The first message sent over the network was the word “LOGIN” — but the network crashed after “LO”. A typical early release. Nevertheless, the network developed. The first protocols appeared: Telnet, FTP, e-mail. These were tools created by programmers for programmers. There were no interfaces, everything was controlled from the command line. The Internet did not yet exist, but its technical base was already being laid at the university and laboratory.

Invention of the World Wide Web

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist from CERN, proposed creating a system that would allow sharing scientific documents in the form of hyperlinks. He invented the three pillars of the Internet: • HTML — markup language • HTTP — transfer protocol • URL — addressing system He himself wrote the first web server and the first browser, working on a NeXT computer. The Web was not born by marketers, but by one programmer who was tired of searching for the necessary files manually. From that moment on, the idea of the Internet began to change the world — slowly at first, and then like an avalanche. The first websites appeared, and then the first search engines and browsers.

Programmers who built the infrastructure

What did programmers do during these years? • Developed basic protocols: TCP/IP, DNS, SMTP, HTTP • Built servers and came up with client-server architecture • Created the HTML language and the first specifications • Solved security problems: SSL, passwords, sessions It was the programmers who determined how the network would be structured: what a “request” meant, how the connection was processed, how the browser understood the code. Everything that happens today in milliseconds after clicking on a link was then written by hand and debugged for weeks. Conclusion The Internet was not created by a corporation, but as a result of a series of hacker and research experiments. It grew out of the need to transmit data — and became the digital environment for our entire lives. And if sometimes it seems like everything is held together with scotch tape — that’s because it is. It’s just that this scotch tape, written in the 70s, turned out to be surprisingly strong.