Understanding and Demystifying Complex Computing Concepts

Understanding complex systems like DNS, HTTP, SQL, and Bash is challenging due to hidden processes, confusing tools, and vast information.

### Demystifying and Understanding Complex Technical Concepts
* 😤 Sometimes, even seemingly **basic concepts** can take a long time to learn and understand, leading to **frustration**.
* 🧠 To make learning easier, it helps to identify what makes a topic **difficult**.
* 🐚 Bash is challenging due to its **infrequent use, weird behavior, and numerous gotchas**.
* 🔍 Understanding the **chronological order of operations** in Bash scripts can **simplify learning**.
* 📦 Tools like ShellCheck can help catch errors and **reduce cognitive load**.
* 📜 Sharing stories about personal experiences and best practices can be an **effective way to learn and teach**.
* 🌐 Understanding HTTP can be difficult due to the **complexity of browsers** and a **large number of headers**.
* 🗂 Creating a small, manageable list of **important headers** and using references like **MDN and RFCs** can help.
* Understanding SQL execution order can be challenging, but creating a mental model of the process can **aid learning**.
* 👥 Sharing knowledge, tools, and stories with others can help **demystify complex concepts**.
* 🔒 DNS can be difficult to understand due to hidden components like **resolver libraries and caches**.
* 🔍 One approach is to **reveal hidden aspects** by creating tools or using existing ones to **show what's happening**.
* 📈 Digging into DNS cache with the **"+nocr" flag** can provide insights into **caching behavior**.
* 📝 Documenting knowledge and sharing it with others can help create a **collective understanding**.
* 🤝 Everyone plays a role in the learning process, from **asking questions** to **writing documentation**.
* ❓ It's essential to understand the reasons why certain topics are **challenging to find effective learning strategies**.
* ❓ While not all answers may be known, continuing to **explore and understand difficult concepts** is **crucial**.

hello strangeloop. So, I often give talks about things that I'm excited about, um, or that I think are really fun. But today, I want to talk about something that I'm a little bit mad about, um, which is that sometimes things that seem like they should be basic take me like 10 years or 20 years to learn, like way longer than they seem like they should, um. So, one thing that took me a long time to learn was DNS, which is this question of, well, like what's the IP address for a domain name like example.com. And this feels like it should be a straightforward thing, but seven years into learning DNS, I would be setting up a website and then, you know, I would feel like things should be working, and I thought I understood DNS, and then I would run into problems like my domain name wouldn't work, and I'd be like, why not, I don't get it, why, why don't I understand this yet, what's happening, uh, and sometimes this would feel kind of like a personal issue, right.

um like this shouldn't be so hard for me. I should understand this already. It's been seven years, right? Like what's going on? And sometimes if I talked about my problems on the internet, people, internet strangers would tell me, like, yeah, you know, the problem is with you. You should understand this already. Um, but luckily, uh, I have kind of a big ego, and so I didn't take it too personally. And I also have a lot of patience. Uh, So eventually, there're probably like maybe four different problems I was having with DNS, and eventually I figured out what all those four different problems were, and then I got you a place where I felt like I succeeded, and I was like, okay, hooray, incredible, I get DNS, we're good. Um, but then later on, I would see my friends struggling with the exact same kind of problems that I was running into, right? Like they'd be like, hey, like, why is my domain resolving, and it doesn't end, right? We're still having the same problems over and over.

and over again, and it's a little, it's a little frustrating. Um, it feels a little redundant, um, and and it makes me mad, especially when my friends take it personally and they're like, Hey, like I should really understand this already, and I'm like, No, man, like everyone is going through this. This is happening to all of us. Um, I think it's happened with DNS to a lot of you. Um, and so I, I got so mad about this that I decided to make it my job. Um, I, I started a little publishing company called wizard zines, uh, where [Applause] um, wow, uh, where where I write about some some of these topics and try to try to demystify them. Um, here, here are here are a few of them. Um, and I want to talk today about about a few of these doctors and sort of like what I've learned about um explaining them and trying to what what makes them so hard and how we make them easier. Um, so we're going to talk about bash. We're going to talk about hdp. We

going to talk about SQL and we're going to talk about DNS. Um, and for each of them, we're going to talk a little bit about, like, what's, you know, like, what's so hard about it, and also what, what, what are some things we can do to make it a little bit easier for each other. So I want to start out with Bash, uh, and I think, I think if we think about what's hard about Bash, it usually, uh, so Bash is a programming language, right, but it's, uh, one of the weirdest programming languages, I think, that, that I deal with, um, and to talk about why it's weird, let's do like a little, little, little small demo, um, of, of, of, of Bash. Um, so I have this little script called, uh, bad.sh. Um, oh, okay, let's make this a lot bigger. Okay, now it's a lot bigger, and this just moves a file and then echoes success, and in most programming languages that I use, if there's a problem, the program will stop, and I think, I think a lot of, you know,

from maybe a sad experience that Vash does not stop right it keeps going and going on. Sometimes very bad things happen to your computer in the process. Um so um one thing I eventually learned is that you can write this thing at the top of your program. Um we're going to look at better.sh, which is set Dash e. And what saidashi does is it says hey, if there's a problem, you should stop right, which like honestly that's what I wanted in the first place but sure you know we'll take it. Um and so if you've run this, you just see the error from envy and then it stops. So great we're happy, you know, everything is good. Um wrong way over here. Um but like what I've learned about that is that every time I think I've learned, you know, everything that can happen and everything that can go wrong, that should be like, oh surprise, there's a little, there's more things right there's more things that can happen. So we're going to look at another program called Bad again.sh.

where instead we put our code in a function, right? And then maybe if our function fails, we want to echo like, Oh, the function failed, um, and we do set dash i, right? So it should be everything should be okay, um, but if we run it, we get the success message again and didn't stop, it just kept going. And this, um, so this is because like when you have this or here, uh, it disables globally. So it's actually in the function, which is not what I wanted, right? And not what I've expected. This is not a bug in bash. This is the documented behavior, um, you know. So this is what we have, um, so that's fine, um, and I think that the thing here that makes it tricky is a lot of us don't use bash very often, right? Like I maybe write a bash script like every six months, then I'd put it there and then I don't look at it again and just leave it. Um, it does its thing.

and I think when you have a system that is used very infrequently and it's full of like a lot of weird trivia and gotchas, it makes it very hard to use the system right, makes it very hard to use it correctly. Um, so like how can we, how can we make it easier, right? Like what, what can we do about it? Um, and one thing that I sometimes hear, uh, is you know like this seems hard. People are like, oh yeah, it's impossible to use bash, right? No one can use Bash, um, but like this is, I would say like factually untrue. Um, I would like to, like how many of you are using bash, like exactly, right? Like we're using it, it's happening, um, uh, it doesn't always, you know, work perfectly, but like largely we have a lot of batch programs that are mostly working right. There's like a big community of us who are using bash mostly successfully, um, and the way you can think about it is you have some people on the left who are like, I don't know what is this bash it

seems awful, and other people are like, okay, I know, I know how to make the bash do the things for me, mostly, and it mostly works. [Music] Um, okay, so how do we, how do we like move people from the left to the right, right? Like, what, what are we doing? Um, so in bash, um, one thing you have is, yeah, there's a giant, I'm sure we have to remember, um, uh, but, uh, who's gonna remembering giant fossil trivia, right? Um, not me, but, but computers, computers are, right? Um, and, and for Vash, uh, we, we have this incredible tool called ShellCheck, uh, yeah, um, until check a nose a lot of the trivia and can just tell you like, oh no, you don't want to do that, that, that's gonna, that's gonna give you a bad day, um, and I'm very grateful for ShellCheck, and it makes it much easier for me to write my, uh, my tiny bash scripts, which I write from time to time, uh, so, oh yeah, we're gonna do a little

demo of shell check on on our little program. So if we can do a shell check, and then she'll check if this is a lovely error message. You know, it's a little weird um like you still need to kind of like understand that this is true, and it's a little bit hard, but but still check tells you like this is a problem that you're having, maybe you should be worried about that, and this is good in disable set Dash e. And I just think it's so wonderful that all these tips live in this winter um uh the I think the trick here is not to write letters. Um I actually I mean I I think that some of you probably will write lenders because this is that kind of crowd, but I am not writing linters. Um I had said the way that I write letters is I just tell people about shell check, and then I feel like it's like as if I invented shell check, right, because the person didn't know about it until I told them about it, um and I think I think an incredible

thing we can do um is to kind of like reflect on like the tools that we're using um to like reduce our cognitive load, and all the things that we can't fit into our minds, and just make sure people know about them, right? Like I didn't find out about shell check for a long time, and I was kind of mad about it when I found out. I was like, Excuse me, like I could have been using shell check this whole time. I didn't need to remember all of the stuff in my brain. Oh, that seems a little unfair. Um, I think telling people about these tools makes a big difference. Um, the other thing that I like to do is to warn people about gotchas and some of the terrible things computers have done to me. Um, I think this is an incredibly valuable community service. Um, the thing that I shared about how to disable something I learned from a friend just a few weeks ago. Um, they were like, This thing happened to me at work, and it was very upsetting, and I was

like wow, that is very upsetting. And now I know, and I don't have to go through that myself personally, you know. Um, I guess, uh, honestly, I think probably the lesson I'm going to learn from that is to limit my use of functions. I have to keep my bash script simple. But, um, yeah, it's incredible. And one way I see people trying to kind of share things, terrible things that their computers have done to them, is by sharing like best practices. Um, but what I always love is I always love to hear like the story. This is like, um, like every time someone has like a strong opinion, they were like, No one should ever use that shell. Like, tell me what happened. What did bash do to you? I need to know. Um, and I think the incredible thing about Stories versus best practices is if I know the stories of how the computers have hurt you, um, that I can take that information and decide for myself how I want to proceed, right? Like, maybe I'm

like oh the computer did that to you that's okay. I I could deal with that. I don't mind. Or sometimes I'll be like oh no um I'm gonna do the thing you recommended because I do not want that to happen to me. But sometimes yeah sometimes I don't mind. So I want to know I want to know what I'm getting into um. So that was Bash. Next up we're going to talk about hdp um. So when I I was talking uh to Marco Rogers at some point many years ago and he said uh like new developers are struggling with HTTP. And at first I was a little confused about this. I was like what's um heard about hdb and because the way I was thinking about it at the time was kind of like you know if you have an interviewer spots it has a few parts. It has this response code um. It has some headers. It has a body. And I thought okay like that feels like a relatively simple structure right. So like what's what's the problem so so.

I talked to a friend about, uh, who was confused about HTTP, who was new to it, and they asked, Well, why does it matter what headers you said? And I was like, Well, you know, the browser. And then I thought, at the browser, I thought, Browser... that browser. [Laughter] Is that like Firefox is 21 million lines of code, right? Um, and like, we... we have like, it's been evolving since the 90s. Um, there have been, I think, as I understand it, one million changes to like the browser security model over the years as we've just, people have discovered new and exciting exploits. Um, and as the whole life became scarier and scarier place, um, the browsers really a lot to understand. Um, and then like once I thought about that, I was like, Well, of course, people are a bit confused about HTTP, right, if you have to understand what the browser is doing. Um, so then suddenly it went from like, Okay, this is simple, it's like, Wait, how do I talk about this at all? Um, so like, you know, Oh yeah, the trick...

for knowing why things are hard is if there's 20 million lines of code somewhere. Like maybe that's why, maybe that's why people are confused. Um, but then like okay, how do we, how do we, how do we make it easier? Um, and how do we, how do we wrap our minds around this like 20 million lines of code, right? Um, and so one thing I think about is like okay, these are some of the Issue request headers, that's like kind of a big list. It's like 43 headers there. Um, there's some more like optional ones people use, like this assumes like kind of overwhelming in a lot. Um, but like I, um, have a small brain. It's not that big. It does not contain all those that information. Many of those things I have no idea what they are. Um, and so, uh, when, when I think about trying to try to explain things, um, and try to explain like how do you fit like the information about these 20 million lines of code into your brain, I'm like well, what is actually in my

brain right um which only contains you know a human normal human number of things um so this is something I drew about HTTP and you don't need to read this whole thing but I want to talk about kind of the shape of it um so this has 15 headers um these are the ones that I would say that I know about and that I've used. I wrote the most important request headers. What I mean by most important is these are the ones that I used. That I it's a very very subjective view which I think in general is my policy. I like to talk about a little like here's what I know about that's a starting point you could try um Opening 12 words about each one which I think is approximately the amount of information about each one that lives in my mind right um like I know that you can set the except according to gzip and that's all you know that's all I know ah um and that's often all I need to know right like this this set of very small

set of information is working pretty well for me. The general way I think about this trick is like it's this is like turn a big list into a small list. This is like the set of all the things and she's like here's the ones that I've used and that I know that um and uh I think I think that this helps a lot. Another example of those like big list smallest thing is uh command line arguments. So I use a lot of command line tools and like if you look at the man page for a command line tool, it's like this is these are the flags of the man page for prep. I said oh that's too much. I'm like a very I've been using graph for 20 years you know but like I don't know what all that stuff is you know like when I look at the Grab map page this is what I see right. [Applause] I think it's it's really valuable when people are starting out to be like

well look, as someone who's been using the system for a while, I know about seven things about it. And here's what they are um and just like pinning those, like pruning those lists down to like a more human scale, um I think, I think, I think is really helpful. And then like okay, but like what about the stuff that doesn't fit in my brain, right? Because like I have, you know, a few things about HTTP in my brain, but then when I'm using it, sometimes I need to, I need, I need other information which has been like swapped out, right? Um, like maybe the details about how CORS Works, uh, um, and so that's where we come to references, right? Like where, where are we looking at the information, um, and references are another one of these things, like tools that I often find kind of hard to find. Um, I've been trying to learn CSS on and off for 20 years. I've made a lot of progress. It's been going well, um, but only very recently I learned

about this wonderful website called CSS tricks, which is very good and has a lot of information. I was like, why didn't I know about this before? It would have helped me, right? Until someone mentioned, they're like, Oh yeah, use CSS tricks. And I was like, What? What? Come on. But anyway, I'm very happy to know about it now. Even though some things have happened to it, I'm still happy to know about it. And the older posts for HTTP, I think a lot of us use the Mozilla Developer Network. Another, yeah, I love the little cheer from MDN. Another HTTP reference I really love is the official RFC. There's like a new description of how HTTP works that's authoritative, and it was written just last year. And they were like, Hey, let's just write this all down really nicely. So if you want to know exactly what the connection header does, you can look it up, and I just really appreciate that people did that. This is not, I would say, this is not

my top reference. I'm usually more on MDM, but I love knowing that this is there, um, in case I've ever, like, get an HTTP argument with someone. I don't know, it doesn't, it doesn't happen, but if it did, I would know where to go to decide, to decide who's right, um. So, I love to share my favorite references. Um, I do, I do sometimes find it tempting to kind of lie about references, like not on purpose, but like, I'll get really excited about, like, something I saw on the internet. I'm like, oh yeah, you can use this, and then my friend will be like, oh, but like, when do you use that, like, when have you used that? I was like, oh yeah, I never used it, I just thought it was cool, just thought it seems cool, um. And so, it's important to me to try to try to be, like, a little intellectually obvious, honest about, like, what are the references that I'm actually using, um, in real life, um, even if maybe they're, like, a little embarrassing like

uh or I'm like oh yeah I I sometimes I visit like it's like I don't even know what embarrassing references I use but I know there are some um anyway um that's that's http um next up we're going to talk about SQL um the case of the mysterious execution order uh so I I sort of think about SQL because someone mentioned that they're trying to learn SQL. The way I get most of my ideas is one person will say something and I'll be like oh yeah okay I'm now gonna spend six months on that um it's a weird process um and and then I I was wondering like um okay like what's what's hard about SQL um what what gets in the way of trying to learn that um and this I want to say that like when I'm confused about what's hard about something that's always a fact about me right like I'm like wait and something that like I need to work on to understand like why this thing is hard um because it's it's so easy to forget.

um when you've been using something for a while what oh something has gone wrong it's exciting let's see what happens oh oh we're back incredible incredible let's go back to the slideshow View. okay amazing computers um okay yeah so I was wondering what's hard about SQL because I was very used to reading these queries right like this is a query that tries to find people who own exactly two cats for some reason um I was like okay sure you know select from where group I haven't ordered by but then again I was talking talking to a friend about it who was new to SQL they were like well but what's that doing I was like hmm Fair Point and I think the point my friend was making um was that the order that this code is written in is not the order that it happens in right it happens in a different order um and one one question I really like to think about um in cases like this is like well like oh yeah how do we make it easier um what does the computer do first right

like what actually happens on the first chronologically right like computers do live in the same timeline as us um things happen things happen in order uh so like what what happens first um and so like in in an SQL query. In this case, I should build a query um the way I think about it is like you have like a table right like cats um then maybe you filter it you remove some stuff um then you make some groups um then you filter the groups then you do some aggregation so you're like there's two things in each group um and then you can sort it and you could also uh live it limit the results um so that that's how I think about SQL um and that means that you can kind of like talk about the order that things run in right at least conceptually. I think in real life databases have optimizations and it's a little more involved um this is the mental model that I use most of the time and it mostly works for me um so you have like from where Group.

by having and everything is kind of in the same order as it is when you write it, except select is somehow fifth how I think about it. Um and um I've really gotten a lot out of this trick of like trying to tell like the chronological story of what the computer is doing. I want to talk about a couple of other examples of this. Um, another one is Coors, which you mentioned before. I don't really uh, I think that this comic is way too small to read, but the idea has written is basically that like if you're making a cross-origin request in your browser, you can just talk about okay, like what is every message that's being sent, right? Like you have the browser and then you have the server, and what's the back and forth, what's happening, and you can just go through it step by step chronologically, and I think it makes it a lot easier, a lot easier to understand, a lot more concrete. Um, another and but like

answer answering this question. So, I think this is a very straightforward structure, which is what I like about it, like because it's like, well, what happens first? It's like a very um, you know, it feels like it should be easy to answer, but it's not like it's very hard to actually know what our computers are doing. I found um, so one, one, one example of how this is hard is I wrote a blog post recently, um, called Behind Hello World on Linux that talks about what happens when you run hello world. And I wrote it and I was like, you know, cool, cool, cool, um, I wrote a bunch of things. I was really happy with it. Um, and then when I was thinking about it, I was like, I feel like I wrote about this 10 years ago. So I looked at my blog and I'd written the exact same post 10 years ago. But this, this is really cool because the 2013 version of this post, um, it was really and honestly, I think I'm a more concise writer now than I am.

then right the problem was that the original post did not have a lot of information about it because I didn't know what has happened chronologically on the computer right in 2013. Very well and in 2023. I know a lot more and I think there's still honestly quite a lot been a missing um but that's okay. We're gonna maybe in 2033. There'll be ten thousand words um about about what happens chronologically on your computer when you run hello world um so like it's an uneasy question and I think a lot of us um like like me in 2013 and honestly me now often don't know the facts right of what's happening on the computer when you do a thing um. It's very hard which is I think what makes it such a fun question to try to try to discuss um the the the thing. I think is cool about this is that all of us I think have different knowledge about what is happening chronologically in our computers and we can all kind of like

chip in right um like when I posted this blog post, some people were like, oh um I have a lot of thoughts about uh what happens exactly in your uh in your terminal uh what like like I think at the very last stage I was like well then you write hello world, and they're like, but what about there's a whole other world. I was like, that's great, uh I would love to know about that but I do not right um, and honestly, it's a little no, but I would like to learn one day um. What's in there um I think it's just a really fun collaborative question um. I've seen it work really well as like an activity with co-workers um where you're like, hey there's this thing in our company when you make this request comes in what do we what do we do how does that work right um. What I see a lot of some people like, oh yeah okay so what happens is you have this and this and this and this and this and then it goes over there.

and I don't really know what happens. And then someone from the over their team will be like, Oh, yes, when it gets over here, we do this and this and this and this. And then I don't know. Um, and I think it's really fun to get together people with people who have different specializations and and talk about try to like make these like little timelines. Um, of what of what the computer is doing. Um, I think it's really fun, and I've learned a lot from doing that with people. Um, so now we've arrived at DMS. It's kind of where we started the talk. Um, and like what's hard, what's hard about DNS. Um, and when I started writing about this, I actually found it kind of hard because I, you know, I talked about how I struggled with DNS, but then once I got there and I was interested, I was like, Oh, yeah, okay, dude, this is easy, even though it just took me like 10 years to learn how it works. Um, and I struggled so much, but of course

DNS is not, you know, was really hard for me to learn. It's like, why is that right? Like, why did it take me so long? Um, so I have a little little chart here of how I think about DNS. Um, it's a conceptualize this thing. So you have your browser, and then over on the right, you have the authority of name servers who work. I like the source of truth about all the information, right? And then in the middle, you have like a function that you call, and then you have a cache in the middle. So you have like browser, function, cache, source of truth. Cool, um, and the pro a problem with this, um, is that there are a lot of things in here that are totally hidden from you. Um, the library code that you're using when you make a DNS request, often there are a lot of different possibilities for what it could be, and it's not all straightforward to figure out what it is. This is like a source of a lot of my confusion. It's just that there are different possible libraries.

that could be used. Um, the result: there's a cache which has a bunch of cache data that is also invisible to you, and which you also don't really have a good way to look at, and often have no control over. And there's also a conversation between the cache and the source of Truth, these like two red arrows which also you can't see at all. Um, so like that's kind of tough, right? Like, how are you supposed to develop an intuition for a system when it's only doing things that are completely hidden from you? Like, that's a bit rude. Um, um, so what, what, what do we do about that, right? Um, so one thing I was thinking about was like, well, let's talk about just these little arrows on the right, right? Um, so we have our cache, and then we have the source of Truth, and this normally is totally hidden from you because you don't really control either of these servers, um, and definitely they are too busy, uh, doing very high-performance computing to like report to you what they're doing.

right to give you like cool debugging information, but I thought um well like you know anyone can write an authoritative name server. In particular, I could write one um that does whatever I want, right, and that reports back everything, everything that it does um so so with my friend Marie um we we wrote we wrote a little DNS server, and I want to do a little demo of it um so this uh is called mess with DMS. Um the idea is that I have a domain name and you can do whatever you want with it uh uh so we can make we're gonna make a little DNS record called strange Loop um we're going to point it at another domain I have, which is just a picture of an orange because I like oranges, and we're going to create it, and then over here um so so every time a request comes in from a resolver, this will this will report report back what happened. So if we click on this link, we can see okay cool some requests came in, some DNS requests, and it's like oh it asks for

the IPv4 address and the IPv6 address. That's nice. Um, this is I think a Canadian DNS resolver, which is apparently what my browser is configured to use, right? So I've already learned something. Um, oh, oh, you guys. [Applause] You're doing such a great job of my demo. Thank you. So wonderful. Um, so, so all of you, I don't even need to go either make other requests in my terminals, um, because you're all using different DNS resolvers. So some of you are coming from using AdGuard, some of you are on T-Mobile, some of you are using Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 as your DNS resolver. Um, do we see anything else fun in here? There's a lot of Cloudflare. Um, sometimes Cloudflare requests an HTTPS record. I honestly do not know what that is or why it's doing that. That's like a fun question. Um, and just like, uh, Dave was here. Thank you. [Laughter] Um, and so, so we're already seeing a lot of

like what's happening behind the scenes uh in DNS. I did this in the hotel, and I was a little bit stressed because I think what was happening in the hotel is that the uh the hotel was intercepting all my DNS connections and running it through their DNS resolver, which was very cool, but I wasn't didn't feel 100 uh ready to explain it on stage. So I'm very happy the DNS set up here is a little more like what I'm used to. Um, but yeah, that's uh, that, that's how we can show some things that are hidden. Um, thank you all for participating in My Demo. [Applause] Um, all right, um, another, another example of showing things that are hidden that I really like, um, is that his website called float.exposed. Um, yeah, I hear I hear some bands, uh, who who show you how how floating Point number works, um, and you can do you can do a lot of fun things here. Let me see if I can remember how to do this. I want to find 127. Is that it? No

uh, this is not gonna. I don't remember exactly how to do this. There's a number. Is it this one? Oh yeah, here it is. Here it is. Okay, so, so one fun thing about floating point, especially 32-bit floating point, is that you have like if you have the number 16 million and then you look at the next floating point number after that, it's two more. And then if you go up a little more, then the next number after that is 16 more. And they just get farther and farther apart. Anyway, this is not a talk about what I want. I could truly do an entire talk just in this site. I'm talking about fun things about floating point and how it works, but that's not this talk. We need to, we need to go back to talk about how it's nice. It's nice to show hidden things about how the computer works. Um, yeah, I think one other trick for DNS when you have a distributed system is like maybe you're confused because there are five

million computers involved, most of which you have no control over, and some of which are doing not what they're supposed to do. Um, so that's another trick for understanding why things are hard. Um, so like what, what else, what else part of a DNS, right? Um, so we talked about how most of the system is hidden from you. Um, another thing that's hard is sometimes I think the tools are confusing. Um, so another thing that I talked about with hidden is that the resolver has Cash, Cash data, right? Um, and you might want to know what's in the cache just to understand what's happening, right? You're like, am I getting this result because it was cached, or is this not cash, what's the deal? Um, so you actually can kind of query a resolver to ask it what it has cash. Um, there's this, uh, this, uh, flag called plus newer curse. Um, and this is maybe in a way a way of asking like, how popular is my website? Like, is it popular enough that you have it saved, or has no one visited it? My, my

records are not saved for that long. They'll only stay for like five minutes. Um, so I'm basically asking like, Hey Google, has anyone asked for our website in the last five minutes? Um, but when I look at this response, this is a little bit like, Oh my God, like, please, what is all this? Um, and I think that this kind of thing can be really when I show people to this, this one, and they're not used to it, they're like, Oh, this DNS thing must be really complicated. And I'm like, No, man, like, this is just maybe not the best way to format it. Um, so like, what can we do about a confusing outfit, right? Um, one of my favorite tricks, I call eraser eyes, um, which is I like to show people like, Hey, like, when I look at this, um, all this stuff, I don't see a lot of it, right? Like, my eyes are ignoring it. What I see is just this. I see this thing where it says 'serve fail,' which is a very unintuitive way of it saying, 'I do not have that in my cache.'

and no one has wanted to know about your website in the last five minutes. Um, which now I know, you know, um, and and I think that there's I've learned so much from people just like doing a little demo of a tool, being like, hey, you know, this is how I use this tool, these are the things that I look at, and these are the things I ignore, which is usually most of it, right? And this is like the information I have in my brain related to like the output format of this tool. Um, and I really love to use Dig, even though it's kind of a little hairy, um, because it's everywhere, you know, and it hasn't changed. I know that if I learn its weird output format once, then then I can, then I can know that forever. Um, and I really love to have that. Um, so what can we do about all this? We've talked about like some problems, and I want to talk about like a little bit more about like what are we doing, um, and like what are we doing to kind of

like help like move ourselves from like we don't understand to like okay. I mostly can deal with DNS, at least 90% of the time. Um, and I don't feel too stressed about it. Or I could deal with that. Or I could deal with HTTP. Um, we talked about a bunch of tools trickstering people over. Um, like sharing useful tools or your references. Or like trying to tell like a story of like, I think this thing happens first and then this happens later. Um, we talked about showing hidden things and like demoing weird tools and trying to be like, I know what this one means when it says this, it means this. And then this other stuff, I don't know. And um, sharing what we know. But when I did some practices of this talk, some of my friends were like, I don't do that stuff, Julia. And I really disagreed with them. So I want to talk about that because in my and my friends were like, well, you know, I don't have a blog, you know, like I'm not a blogger, like usually.

and I was like, No, man, like, um, I think I really think you don't need to, like, like, be on the internet to be an important part of this process of, like, telling people about, like, how you use computers and, like, how you understand them. Um, and my experience is that a lot of people, um, have helped me understand how computers work and, like, have shared, like, little pieces of their experience with computers. Um, like my co-workers have learned a lot from my friends and, honestly, a lot of random strangers on the internet. And I think some of you, uh, have helped me over the years, um, maybe on Twitter or on Mastodon. Um, and I want to talk about some of the some of the people. You can maybe raise your hand if you think that this is you. One person I think who's really helped me is the Grumpy Old Timer. I see some hands where I'm like, Wow, it's so cool. And they're like, Yes, however. [Laughter] Um, here, let me tell you some stories of how this has gone wrong, right.

in my life um we have the loud newbie um who's like wait how does that work, and then everyone else is like oh thank God like it's not just me. Um I think it's especially valuable uh when when the like loud newbie person is actually like kind of experienced. Um I sometimes try to do this when I feel it went in a place where I'm pretty confident, and I'm like excuse me I don't understand this um when I feel like I'm not going to be judged. I think it's a nice thing to do when you feel like you're not going to be judged so that other people who feel like they will be judged can like come along on your coattails. Um I have the bug chronicler who's like okay that bug, this could never happen again. I'm gonna make sure we understand what happened because I want this to end now. Um we have the tool Builder who is like I don't know, I'm not going to speak to you about this, but I can write code.

the code will fix it. Um, we have the person who, like, today I learned person who's like, Hey guys, I learned this cool new thing. Um, check out this weird bug. Um, we have the person who's read the entire internet and has 700 tabs. Um, Oh, really? I value a lot. Um, we have the person who's just willing to answer questions, right? And it was like, Yeah, I can tell you how that works, you know. Um, and I think, I feel like, kind of like at the end of all of this, right? I'm like, sometimes you have someone who's really who's willing to write some things down and who's like, Okay, wait a second, I'm gonna write this somewhere where other people can read it and can find it later. Um, but I think, I think that, uh, this, like, the documentarian really comes at the end of the whole process and all of us, all these people, kind of need to work together, right? So that we can all figure out how all this weird stuff that we use.

works um so those the those are those are all the people um and we're almost out of time so to to end I the one thing I'd like to convince you of um is I feel like if you're struggling with something that feels basic like it's not just you you know I think we're all struggling with a lot of these things. I feel like this should be basic um and we're struggling for things for reasons right um and I think for a lot of the same reasons and uh much like much like when debugging a computer program like if you're if you have a bug you want to understand why the bug is happening if you're gonna fix it um. I think if if we're all struggling with the same things together um I think if we you know I think if we um I think we sorry I think if we know why we can figure out how to fix them um so some of the reasons we talked about was like maybe uh the the program is a giant pile of trivia and gotcha we

talked about how maybe there's a maybe there's 20 million lines of code somewhere. Um, maybe the system is being hidden from you. Uh, maybe the Tool's output is extremely confusing, and no UI designer has ever thought about in their life. Um, there, there's a lot of these things going on. Um, I'm gonna say like I don't have all the answers for why things are hard. Um, I, I do not understand, uh, yet really why, why git is hard. It's something I've been thinking about recently. Um, but that's something that's something I'm excited to keep working on. I keep trying to figure it out, figure out. Um, that's all, that's all I have for you. Thank you. [Applause]

"Making Hard Things Easy" by Julia Evans (Strange Loop 2023)

Videos from the Strange Loop conference in St. Louis, MO.

Strange Loop Conference

Struggling with learning DNS for years, the speaker found it frustrating that such a basic concept took so long to understand, leading to personal and common issues with setting up websites and domain names.

This frustration and the common struggles of friends led the speaker to start a publishing company to demystify and explain challenging topics like Bash, aiming to make them easier for everyone.

Bash's unusual behavior, infrequent use, and unexpected issues make it a challenging and tricky programming language to work with, often leading to surprises and frustration for infrequent users.

Bash is often considered difficult to use, but in reality, there is a large community successfully using it, with the help of tools like ShellCheck to identify and address issues.

Sharing personal experiences and stories of how computers have caused problems, as well as best practices, can help others navigate and decide how to proceed with Bash scripting.

Overall, the focus is on sharing tools and knowledge to make Bash scripting more accessible and manageable for users.

The Significance of Browser Evolution in Understanding HTTP

The evolution of browsers, with 21 million lines of code and one million security changes, plays a crucial role in understanding the complexity of HTTP.

Simplifying the overwhelming amount of HTTP headers into a smaller, subjective list can greatly help in comprehension.

Additionally, the use of references is valuable for accessing the information that may not fit in one's brain capacity.

Discovering CSS Tricks and Navigating HTTP References

The user expresses excitement about discovering CSS Tricks website for valuable information.

They also appreciate the HTTP references provided by the Mozilla Developer Network and the official RFC for understanding the intricacies of HTTP.

The user emphasizes the importance of being intellectually honest about the references they use and shares their approach to learning SQL and understanding the order of execution in queries.

The Effectiveness of Chronological Storytelling in Understanding Computer Processes

Chronological storytelling is a helpful approach in explaining the step-by-step processes of computer functions, making it easier to comprehend.

The method is particularly useful in unraveling complex concepts, such as the chronology of events when running a program on a computer.

Collaborative discussions using this storytelling technique can enhance understanding, especially when involving people with different areas of expertise.

DNS can be difficult to understand due to hidden processes, such as library code variations and invisible cache data.

The interaction between the cache and the source of truth is also opaque, making it challenging to develop an intuition for the system.

One way to demystify DNS is by creating a custom authoritative name server, which allows for full visibility and control, as demonstrated in the "Mess with DNS" server.

This demo revealed the behind-the-scenes of DNS requests and the variety of DNS resolvers used, providing a tangible way to uncover hidden DNS processes.

Understanding DNS and Its Hidden Complexities

Floating point numbers have a unique pattern where the gap between them increases as the numbers get larger.

DNS, as a distributed system, can be confusing to understand, especially with the hidden cache data in resolvers.

Demystifying the confusing output format of DNS tools and sharing knowledge and experiences can help make DNS management less stressful.

The Importance of Community in Understanding Computers

Many people have contributed to the speaker's understanding of computers, including co-workers, friends, and strangers on the internet.

The speaker highlights the valuable roles of different individuals in the computer learning process, such as the bug chronicler, the tool builder, the "today I learned" person, and the willing question answerer.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of working together as a community to understand and solve common challenges in using computers.