Written retrospectively for the 2012 archive.

There’s a pleasure in following something ordinary all the way through. I click a link, the browser makes a request, and a server decides what to send back. On a normal day, that all disappears into the page I wanted to read.

Looking back, I’m glad I’ve kept making time to ask how those things work. Understanding one small step gives me somewhere to start the next time a page surprises me. It also gives me a clearer way to explain what happened to someone waiting for it to load.