Hosts-file Memes

Someone finally said it. DNS is apparently a scam perpetuated by Big Nameserver to sell more resolvers. Servers were perfectly happy being identified by raw IP addresses until sysadmins got greedy and demanded "respect" in the form of complex distributed systems that nobody understands. The argument here is that we had hosts.txt—a single file that every computer could use to map names to IPs. Simple. Elegant. Completely unscalable. But who needs the internet to grow anyway? Instead, sysadmins convinced everyone we needed this elaborate DNS infrastructure with recursive queries, authoritative nameservers, TTLs, and zone files. Now when someone asks for example.com, you get a 17-step journey through multiple servers just to return an IP address. They've been laughing at us this whole time while we troubleshoot NXDOMAIN errors at 3 AM. The three diagrams with increasing question marks perfectly sum up every developer's understanding of DNS: "I think I get it... wait, what?... I have no idea what's happening anymore."

Someone just asked what a TXT record is and now the entire DNS infrastructure is having an existential crisis. The rant starts off strong: naming servers? Pointless. DNS queries? Never needed. The hosts.txt file was RIGHT THERE doing its job perfectly fine before we overengineered everything. Then comes the kicker—sysadmins apparently want to know "your server's location" and "arbitrary text" which sounds like something a "deranged" person would dream up. But wait... that's literally what TXT records do. They store arbitrary text strings in DNS for things like SPF, DKIM, domain verification, and other critical internet infrastructure. The irony is thicker than a poorly configured DNS zone file. The punchline? After this whole tirade about DNS being useless, they show what "REAL DNS" looks like—three increasingly complex diagrams that nobody understands, followed by a simple DNS query example. The response: "They have played us for absolute fools." Translation: DNS is actually incredibly complex and essential, and maybe we shouldn't have been complaining about TXT records in the first place. It's the classic developer move of calling something stupid right before realizing you don't actually understand how it works.