HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
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, 8:03:49 PM 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

9 sources
0x0000000·Apr 9, 2019
I've been struggling with this concept in the context of teaching someone web development. There's just so much you "have" to know and it all seems so interrelated. Do you start with HTTP since that drives the web? If you do, do you first need to cover computer networking, IP addresses, routing? HTML and CSS aren't terrible to get started with, but are ultimately limited and [generally] aren't enough to build "some cool app". Then you have the beastly JavaScript, which you'll probably use on your front-end but only might use on your backend - there are so many other options. Python and Django? Ruby and Rails? Any of the dozens of PHP frameworks? Oh, right, now we might need to get into SQL. And builds and deployments and sysadmin-y tasks. Don't forget security. Or we could build everything serverless or on some PaaS, but how much understa
Read the rest
nding do you really have of what's going on there. Having gone through undergrad and grad school for CS, I think part of it comes not truly realizing or accepting just how much knowledge you get from taking ~45 college courses . It's taken years for me to learn a reasonable breadth and depth of this subset of computer science, (and there's way more I don't know than I do know) and I struggle with the fact that I seem unable to boil all of that into the "a-b-a-b" pattern the author describes. Start doing the thing you want to be doing (e.g, making a web app), and learn just enough of the bits you need to keep on that path. But it's much easier said that done when you're starting from scratch. It's like the pervasive interview question of "What happens when you type google.com in your browser and hit enter?"[0] Well, a lot... where do you start? [0] https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when
In B Before A
meddlin·Jan 16, 2019Recommendation phrase
> my mental model of causality was limited to the design of the machine - software interfaces and physical connections - and was completely missing the possibility of non-intentional interactions via the physical world. I love hearing of stories like this. Similar line of thought to my personal favorite interview question: ""What happens when you type google.com into your browser and press enter?" (Answer in as much depth as you like.)" https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when
In The Antisocial Laptop

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.