We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they would be easy.

I also think there is an incredible transference of skills from one domain to another. This is a risk (everything looks like nail when you have hammer), but there are many domains that are very mature where you can learn a trick and apply it to a new domain over and over again.

I recently saw this guy on HN who had written a web server for an Atmel AVR and also implemented a TCP/IP stack to boot. It obviously was far from feature complete, but it did work. He used SLIP to communicate with the "server."

Respect

> far from feature complete, but it did work

well that's the trick. If you look at implementing a Web browser or a physics engine you instantly give up, and you are right about it, it's just too hard. If instead you write a partial HTTP client which can display some text from a URL or have a 3D scene and in it an object Y coordinates get smaller each millisecond then suddenly in terms of the essence of each, you are 80% there really. Now if you want to implement the "rest" you might need an entire lifetime, or more. Still IMHO it's definitely worth doing very compact and limited versions of all those in order to learn, even if done only once in your life.

I used to implement these things professionally and to write an IP + TCP + HTTP is certainly less than a year with experience. would I ship that and expect people to use it without a lot of burnin? no..but to say that its a lifetime of work is off by at least a factor of 10.

Maybe not an HTTP client but a modern browser with its JavaScript engine, encryption support, CSS engine, etc I think for most people really is a lot of work. If one does rely on the right libraries it's a weekend of fun (and pain) so I would argue between few hours and a lifetime, depending on how much you implement.

My point is that the essence, the core mechanism, is typically a 1-liner, but only with a pedagogical context, not a production (in the sense of anybody else using it reliably in realistic situations) context.

At least look inside and appreciate the value of it already being together!

if you have time, money, energy, attention to do it then yes

but unfortunately not everyone have same opprtunities

My point is that it is a great way to learn and be more appreciative of what is done and why - network stacks, graphic stacks, web, etc - before being too critical of them.

Besides, statements such as "$7B for a proxy" or "it is just a wrapper" or "we can build it in-house" mostly come from those that have not had any measure of the scope due to not having any real experience with the said problem.

you can spend day less on HN and write something

or you can just do both ??? why we acting like HN isn't take 5 minute max ????

Cause it's not 5 min max