> I think they were more references the human readability of HTTP/1.0 in general instead of binary encoded data.

Yup! You’re exactly right. I honestly thought that was obvious in context.

There’s something just right about being able to manually connect to a web server and run queries against it, with very little in the way of tooling to do so. Technically, of course, both telnet(1) and nc(1) are tools, and even one’s TCP/IP stack and OS are, too, which is why I write ‘very little.’ It’s a heck of a lot fewer tools, and more general tools, than JSON-over-HTTP or RTP prober.

And — please — do not refer to me as ‘they.’ I am not a collective, but rather a human being. I find being referred to as ‘they’ to be profoundly offensive.