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alex
what-happens-when
Web Development2013–2026
alex / what-happens-when

what-happens-when

An attempt to answer the age old interview question "What happens when you type google.com into your browser and press enter?"

Web DevelopmentLearning & Reference
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
58Distinct people
62Mentions
3Explicit recommenders
43.5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

An attempt to answer the age old interview question "What happens when you type google.com into your browser and press enter?"

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

In the valley you do not need a degree of any sort, but not having a degree is definitely the exception. Those people without a degree often have a long work history working…

hayst4ck used a recommendation phrase. 3 indexed comments match. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 9:28:18 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year62 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-11-08 00:37:04 UTC to 2026-08-03 23:41:57 UTC.

02468102013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 3 submissions, 5 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 2 submissions, 8 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 3 submissions, 6 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 5 submissions, 1 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 2 submissions, 6 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 3 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC835
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1028
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC936
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC651
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC826
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC330
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211

What Hacker News says

10 sources
ominous·Oct 29, 2016
It has to do with designing a system to be used by people. UNIX is a system designed to be used by people. - "Any command line interaction is decidedly more involved than the typical user plugging in a cable." Right. "The typical user plugging a cable". I expect the user to become a "typical user" after learning how to choose and use a cable, and getting acquainted with his hardware and software. One is not born a typical user, as you seem to imply (plugging a cable is not a complex task). It is. Everything is complex. Using the command line is complex, and then you factor your "typical uses" into aliases or scripts. Or maybe you curl | bash scripts from the web, and then cry when they fail / your box catches internet aids. Or you use an ipad for all the computing you do, and expect things to just work. See: a typical everyday usecase: ht
Read the rest
tps://github.com/alex/what-happens-when Did the user write "oogle.com" instead of google, and got malware? ....Inexcusable, as you said? Should it just work? I say: "why did the user write oogle.com? Did he want malware?" Simple stuff.
In Total Nightmare: USB-C and Thunderbolt 3
truetuna·Apr 27, 2016
I've had my fair share of bad interviews too. Just recently I was interviewing for a full stack position with a company that tried to get me to recite "what happens when I type google.com into my browser". I asked them where they had gotten idea from and showed them this: https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when. They decided ask me another question soon after. Sometimes the questions aren't even related to data structures or algorithms. I'm OK with those because at least you can somewhat prepare for them. I've once had an interviewer ask me obscure questions about Netscape 6 (this was 2016 btw). > I much prefer “homework” projects, even if they involve me working “for free”, because I feel like they ask for actual programming skills rather than the “guess the algorithm” lottery of phone screens and whiteboard coding. Me too but when you
Read the rest
're interviewing with 3+ companies at the same time while working at your current job, it gets difficult. There was one time where I had spend my Saturday afternoon maybe 6-8 hours completing their "homework" project. I got a call back from them a few days later for a follow up interview and they flat out didn't even bother to ask about the project I had completed for them. What was the point? Tech interviews suck.
In Hiring Is Broken – My interview experience in the tech industry

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