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alex / 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?"
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Consideration of physical and physiological events? #173

Open precariousbacon opened 9 years ago

precariousbacon commented 9 years ago

I don't see one, so I'm throwing in my two cents regarding additional topics to include the physical processes involved in the user viewing the webpage (photons from the monitor moving to the user's eyes) and physiological (the eye receiving those impulses, transmitting signals to the brain's vision center, etc.).

Would this material fall within the intent of this project, or is it intended to focus on the technical system functionality?

aprescott commented 9 years ago

As much as I would be hugely interested in it, this seems like it's out of scope, as a reader. The moment this repo crosses into a deep description of biological processes, the vast majority of information will become about everything other than the technical aspects of the interactions specifically related to the computer. For instance, a full description of the physics behind photons being emitted from the screen, received by the eye, and processed by the brain would, by itself, require a massive amount of explanation.

The reason I think it's out of scope is that it's all tangential information that doesn't address the main focus:

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

To me, that suggests that the scope of the repo is a thorough explanation of the sequence of events between typing google.com into a browser and the result of that page being seen. It doesn't seem right to go as far as describing, say, the exact process by which useful work is performed in the muscles of a human arm, hand and finger to depress a physical key on a keyboard.

niieani commented 9 years ago

I'd love to see that as a separate project, @precariousbacon !

hmijail commented 8 years ago

In fact, if the focus is centered on the processes from the Enter key bottoming out until the information appears on the screen (which seems to mean "the part of the browser responsible for loading the page reaches a stable state"), nothing biological nor even physical (outside of the hardware) takes place.

Anyway, I guess that getting into that level of biological and physical processes would have to bottom out at some arbitrary point, either because we don't exactly know how something happens (photons - photon capture - retinal processing?? - nerve impulses) or because the level of detail would be daunting/boring (Describe the interaction of photons with air molecules while travelling towards the eye? What exactly happens when a photon is captured? Describe the actual ion interactions that constitute a "nerve impulse"?)