IT Professionals Not Reading RFCs

You should read the RFC if you're responsible for it.

IT Professionals Not Reading RFCs
Photo by Sara Kurfeß / Unsplash

In order for a standard to be adopted by others it has to be explicit in what it can and cannot do.

Any standard we use now to operate the internet, is usually created by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) or the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It's published in a specially formatted paper called a "Request for Comments" or RFC. You can get them from https://www.rfc-editor.org

For example, if I wanted to know how DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) works, I would read about what it's designed to do by going to the website, looking it up and reading RFC 6376. It's not hidden knowledge or no one would be able to use the proposed standard. If I read a blog post about it on some website, I'm playing the game of telephone and I will lose clarity in the process.

I'm not advocating for reading all the RFCs for the technology you use today. That is absurd. But if you are responsible for understanding something for your employment, it's worth the time to actually understand it.