“What I cannot create, I do not understand” — Richard Feynman.

The internet is one of the greatest inventions in human history, and certainly one of the most complex. An incomprehensible number of individual pieces work together to make the internet function as it does today: from hardware to software, from low-level systems to general-purpose applications and the tools developers use to make them real and keep them running.

It isn’t practical for any one engineer to deeply understand each of these complex, interconnected moving parts. But if a task is impossible, does that necessarily mean that there can be no value in its pursuit?

I thought it would be an interesting (if unending) project to try and truly grok the internet, in the very best way possible, by building it. But the internet isn’t just any old beast, it’s an elephant. I don’t know how they like to serve those where you’re from, but in my part of the world we prefer to eat ours one bite at a time.

Disclaimer 1:

I’m an experienced engineer, but have a lot to learn, so I’m by no means an expert on these topics. The primary motivation for this blog is to be used as a learning experience–a vehicle with which to try and fill in some of the gaps in my own knowledge, and to develop better habits and become a better software engineer along the way.

Disclaimer 2:

I promise not to be too strict about the phrase “from scratch” if you won’t. If you do ever come across a similar blog that begins by detailing the process of hand whittling transistors out of silicone, please send a link, because I definitely want to read that.

How does this website work?

I’ll go into more detail on this later (perhaps in a separate post), but in short, this site is built using the Hugo static site generator, and is hosted on Render.

Contact

For now, please send any comments/feedback/questions to admin@thewebfromscratch.com.