# Gopher: a present for Redis

DevFeed: [Gopher: a present for Redis](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/gopher-a-present-for-redis-20618.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://antirez.com/news/127>)

Published: 2019-02-25T17:17:23Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Antirez](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/antirez.md>)

Topics: [Redis](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/redis.md>), [Protocol (disambiguation)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/protocol.md>), [Internet](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/internet.md>), [JavaScript](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/javascript.md>)

Tags: [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [internet](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/internet.md>), [javascript](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/javascript.md>), [protocol](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/protocol.md>), [redis](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/redis.md>)

## AI overview

The article marks Redis's ten-year public anniversary by describing a roughly 100-line Gopher protocol implementation that stores rendered pages in Redis keys. It also reflects on Gopher's small, growing community and its text-focused alternative to tracking-heavy, JavaScript-intensive web pages.

## Source excerpt

Ten years ago Redis was announced on Hacker News, and I use this as virtual birthdate for the project, simply because it is more important when it was announced to the public than the actual date of the project first line of code (think at it conception VS actual birth in animals). I'll use the ten years of Redis as an excuse to release something I played a bit in the previous days, thinking to use it for the 1st April fool: but such date is far and I want to talk to you about this project now... So, happy birthday Redis! Here it's your present: a Gopher protocol implementation. [... here Redis tries to stop the tears, but the emotion is too strong and there are bits (I mean zeros and ones) on the floor ...] WTF are you saying?! should be your automatic question. Gopher in 2019 sounds a bit strange. However it is not *just* a joke, while it is largely a joke. The implementation is just 100 lines of code after all, excluding the external tool to render the pages into Redis keys. But... the thing is that there is really an active community around Gopher, a very small one but one that is growing in the latest years and months. There are people that feel that internet is no longer what it used to be. There is too much control, companies tracking, comments, likes, retweets, to the point that the content is no longer the king. One writes new things for them to be popular for 5 hours and disappear. There is no longer a discussion that can survive more than a few minutes without becoming some kind of flame, unless all the parties self-censor every possible feeling, uneasy word, and belief, to the point to make the discussion quite useless. Finally to load a stupid page with 1k of text requires to load 50 javascript files, to see the screen flickering since client-side rendering is cool, and so forth. On the other hand Gopher is a text only protocol that is great to deliver text only documents where the stress is in what you write. But that would be fetichism, for me the silver bull