The hilarious bit is that they dropped Java for Python, probably due to the massive levels of frustration encountered when trying to do simple things like this.
It is reasonable to recall that Java was being promoted in 1996 as the "net" language, yet lacked basic mature libraries for being so. Java only became a decent language with mature libs after many years of front running this position. Some of us that used Java early on, mainly because business drivers forced it on us (Sun/IBM/BEA wouldn't lie to corporate America?), don't have fond memories.
no idea. I'm not even sure that in 1996 I had heard of python. Not sure why folks on this thread want to keep bringing python into the mix, especially in a 1996 context. Others have stated that python isn't and never has been the core to Google's search engine.
Did URLConnection.SetRequestProperty exist back in JDK 1.0?
The closest I could find were the docs for JDK 1.1.8 in a downloadable zip file, and yes SetRequestProperty existed back in JDK 1.1.8 at least.
Looking at the actual response, and the JDK 1.1.8 docs, he would probably have been using HTTPURLConnection (could not find HttpClient anywhere in the jdk1.1.8 docs) and even HTTPURLConnection in JDK 1.1.8 I could not find the string 'agent' anywhere on the page.
So yea, if the settings were there they were buried and not readily accessible in the documentation of the time.
