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Tech OversimplifiedEngineers consistently exclude non-technical people from understanding enough about technology to better utilise it. Author: Kevin Brown
Engineers consistently exclude non-technical people from understanding enough about technology to better utilise it. This is wrong! Engineers should be equipping non-technical people with enough of an understanding to make the right business decisions, without trying to drag them all the way down into the detail. Language: en Genres: Education, How To, Technology Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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What Happens When You Click on a Button?
Episode 1
Friday, 27 November, 2020
After listening to this show, you should have a better understanding of:How the internet works like a dodgy local delivery service. It takes a lot of steps for information to bounce all over the web and to our doorstep. But once it gets there, it should look like one nicely wrapped package. Internet Protocol (IP) addresses: The location of a computer on the web, formatted as a series of numbers and periods. Essentially the mailing address for any device on the internet.Secure transport: This ensures that information sent over the web cannot be viewed by others. If a padlock icon appears in the web browser, the information should be secure.Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP): The web browser standard that computers (clients) and servers use to talk to each other. Server: A reliable computer that spends all day responding to information requests.Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): The coding language that formats the information on a web page. Coders also use languages like CSS and Javascript to embed styling and function within an HTML coding document.CSS: A coding language that dictates the visual styling of a web page.Javascript: A coding language that makes web content interactive, or clickable.Linkstechoversimplified.comConnect with Kevin on LinkedInTranscriptKevin: Hi, I'm Kevin, and you're listening to Tech Oversimplified, the show where we pump out strategic understanding of technology faster than the Fed prints money.Today, we're going to follow what happens when you click a button on a website to load the next page. Now, I know this seems a little bit boring or dry, but most of us spend hours using these technologies every day. Email? Ding. Video calls? Ding. Downloading this very episode? Ding.So, given that we're using these most days, understanding these technologies at a high level is kind of a superpower in the business world. So many of the things that go wrong with technology are easier to understand when you get what all the pieces are at a high level and how they fit together.I'm going to tackle this in a format that will become really familiar to you throughout the show. I'm going to take a story that's a bit of a contrived example, I’m then going to go through all the pieces involved in that story, break them down one at a time into the high-level technical pieces, and I'm going to explain to you why it all matters, at the end. If you want to research any of these pieces more deeply, we can make that a topic in a future episode, so feel free to reach out to me at techoversimplified.com and we'll get into those details in the future. Now, I should note that there are a lot of acronyms in the tech world. And the first time I'm going to actually say what all the letters mean. But after that, the definitions will always be in the show notes, so feel free to look those up after the show. So, let's get into it.What actually happens when you try to load that next page by clicking that button? So, let's say that you want to ask for the latest Tech Oversimplified episode, but I'm a hipster and I'm on a no tech holiday, so you can't just email me, or text me or, you know, send me a ‘contact us’ inquiry on my website. So, you decide to send a postcard that says, “Hey, can we talk now?” You and I have already agreed, independently of this, that we're going to speak in English, so you know that I can understand you when you say, “Hey, can we talk?”Now as you know, I am, in fact, quite famous. So, you just need to write ‘Kevin Brown’ on the postcard. There's no address required, and everybody will just know where that goes because, of course, I'm Kevin Brown. Where else would it go? So, you go to a dodgy transport company and you give them your postcard. Now they're full service, so they figure out the address for you using a directory book in their office and based on where that address is, they know who to hand it off to next to finally get it to its destination.So, your dodgy local delivery company forward this on, now knowing where it goes, to the post office so it can come to me. Internally, the post office bounces around a bunch, however they want to route it. They can take it from any office to any other office using whatever method of transport they feel is best, as long as it comes out the other side. So, eventually, it gets to my local delivery company, and they put it in my mailbox.Now my assistant checks this mailbox and writes back, “Sure.” on their own postcard. This then bounces all the way back through all the pipes; however it got to me is likely how it will come back, but it's not guaranteed; it doesn't have to go that way. So, let's recap for a moment. You want to talk, you've sent a postcard, my assistant has gotten that postcard and has written back, “Sure, we can talk.”You receive that postcard, so you're now in a place where you know it's okay to talk, I understand English, and that I am in fact willing to have this conversation. Now that you've gotten this postcard back that says, “Sure.” You say, “Okay, great. Can I have the latest Tech Oversimplified episode?” Now, when my assistant receives this request, they give the episode back to you. They give you the script of the show, and they split it across multiple postcards.You're going to find out in a minute why they're so obsessed with these tiny little postcards and why they split all of their content across them instead of just giving you a letter, like a normal person. So, you get all the pieces, and you put it back together on your side. Now you have to arrange them in the right order, you have to understand overall what you've asked for and what you're getting back, but you do, so you put it all back together into this document.As you read through this document, you see that my assistant is referencing images and sounds and all other things that make up this episode. It's kind of strange, they didn't just put them in to begin with, but okay. So, you send more requests to ask for those, and since you know all the ones you need, you can send them largely together in one chunk. You don't have to now wait, do one at a time like you did to start off with.So, what the heck? Why not just send it with the original thing? Well, we'll get to that, too. So, my assistant gives all the pieces back to you, again spread over multiple postcards because that is apparently their super-weird thing that they have to do. So, you assemble all of this on your side, you now have the original request, the original document, you've got all the things that the assistant referenced, and you now have all the pieces of those and you now have the full picture of what you wanted. This is largely how getting web pages work.Okay, so that's it. That's the story. You're sending postcards and the assistant is sending you back responses. You read through those responses and you have to put together the whole picture through multiple requests.So, it's time for concept one, IP addresses. This is Internet Protocol addresses. These are numbers, and currently, they're se...
