Tempest in a teapot: How a 15-year-old rallied programmers to save one of the web's oldest jokes

If you've spent any time browsing the web, chances are pretty good you've run into a page with an error code on it. 

You've likely seen numbers 404 ("not found") or 403 ("forbidden"). 

Less commonly spotted is error code 418, which makes your browser proclaim "I'm a teapot."

If it sounds like a joke, it is: Way back on April Fool's Day in 1998, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) - a group that sets internet standards - proposed "a protocol for controlling, monitoring, and diagnosing coffee pots." That document defined status 418 thusly: "Any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should result in the error code '418 I'm a teapot.' The resulting entity body MAY be short and stout."

The error code has since become a running gag.

Go to Google.com/teapot, and see for yourself. Programming languages like Node.js and Google's Go both include the 418 error as a little Easter egg, as does Microsoft's ASP.NET framework. Someone even rigged a teapot to act as a web server, just so it can proudly display error 418 when you visit it.

On Thursday, however, the future of code 418 was briefly called into doubt. In a GitHub thread, Mark Nottingham, the chairman of the IETF working group that oversees hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), argued that the 418 error was never a part of the standard, which governs how web browsers communicate with web servers.  

People should stop treating 418 as a core part of the HTTP standard, and free up the error number for more serious concerns, he said in his post.

"I know it's amusing, I know that a few people have knocked up implementations for fun, but it shouldn't pollute the core protocol," Nottingham wrote.

This prompted a swift, but fiery, debate of the future of the web's teapot error code. Fortunately, this story has a happy ending.

The pushback

The biggest champion of the teapot status was 15-year-old programmer Shane Brunswick. Brunswick, who will be a sophomore in high school this fall, started a "Save 418" movement, giving it the #Save418 hashtag.

The teapot error is something "that puts a smile on your face," Brunswick told Business Insider. It's a silly little thing from the early internet that's worth preserving, he said. 

"It's a reminder that the underlying processes of computers are still made by humans," Brunswick said. "It'd be a real shame to see 418 go." 

Others pointed out that the teapot status has been treated as a part of HTTP for so long that removing it could actually cause technical problems for many sites. That scored technical points for Brunswick's side. 

Nottingham wasn't expecting such a big response, he told Business Insider. He just wanted to clarify 418's status - or lack thereof. And he took Brunswick's opposition in stride.

"I'm a bad, bad man," Nottingham quipped on Twitter, with a link to Brunswick's website.

While some have tried to chastise Brunswick for being disrespectful, Nottingham said that above all, he really appreciated that a teenager was taking such an interest in a standard that's almost three decades old.

"I'm really happy that the next generation of developers still care about HTTP so deeply," Nottingham said.

Happy ending

Ultimately, after a day of debate, Nottingham and Brunswick came to an accord that seems to have made everybody happy. On Friday afternoon, Nottingham filed a proposal to adopt 418 as an official HTTP code. If and when it's approved, "I'm a teapot" will officially become a core part of the web.

In response, Brunswick updated his website: "Thanks for everything Mark Nottingham, you put up a good fight! =)"

The issue is now closed, with programmers cheering that their teapots are safe. For his part, Nottingham is keeping a healthy sense of humor about the situation. 

"If you ask me, it's a tempest in a ... ah, never mind," Nottingham wrote in an email to Business Insider.

Get the latest Google stock price here.