A magazine about programmers, code, and society. Written by and for humans since 2018.

Download this issue in PDF or EPUB format.

Welcome to the fifty-second issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about The World Wide Web. In this edition we analyze the evolution of websites, from SPAs to server-rendered Hypertext; in the Library section, we review "Transcending CSS" by Andy Clarke; and in our Vidéothèque section, we learn how to use a NeXT Computer thanks to Steve Jobs.

In March 1989, Tim-Berners Lee (aka TimBL), a scientist at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, proposed a Hypertext-based system to organize the incredible amounts of information generated annually by the organization. He followed this proposal with prototypes, leading to the creation of the first web server and browser and the development of the first versions of the HTTP protocol and the HTML markup language.

In 2019 an extraordinary team of web development and design celebrities gathered in the offices of CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, to build an emulator of the original web browser created by Tim Berners-Lee, known as WorldWideWeb.  This emulator is available online and, fittingly enough, runs on a modern web browser.

We have often said in the pages of this magazine that some books carry with them the Zeitgeist of their era. Examples are Bruce Tate's "Beyond Java," Joe Armstrong's "Programming Erlang," and Toby Segaran's "Programming Collective Intelligence." Such books have a tremendous impact upon publication, freezing in words not only a valuable body of knowledge, but also the spirit and promise of a new direction for the industry. Even if the APIs they describe become obsolete over time (which is mainly unavoidable), they remain as hallmarks of an era, valuable witnesses of the preoccupations and needs of practitioners at the time of their publication.

Back to top