Request & Response
Easy+10 XPWatch a single request travel to a server and the answer travel back — the atom of every system.
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Watch
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Press Run to begin.
Everything a system does is made of one tiny loop: someone ASKS (a request) and someone ANSWERS (a response). Press Run and watch a single request leave your phone, reach the server, and come back as an answer.
▸What's a 'request'?
A little message your phone sends that says what you want — like 'give me the home page.' The 'GET /home' on the token is exactly that: GET means 'fetch', /home is the page you're asking for.
▸What does '200 OK' mean?
It's the server's way of saying 'here's your answer, everything went fine.' 200 is a success code. If something went wrong you'd see a different number — like 404 ('I couldn't find that') or 500 ('I broke').
▸Why does the trip take time?
The server might be in another city or country. The request has to physically travel there and the answer has to travel back. That round-trip time is called latency — and a lot of system design is about making it smaller.
▸Is it always just one request and one answer?
One loop at a time, but a single screen can fire MANY requests (one for text, one for images, one for your profile…). Each is its own little ask-and-answer. Once you can picture one, you can picture a thousand.