I’m on the CodeNewbie podcast this week talking about how the Internet works – we talked about TCP, UDP, netcat, and a few other things. CodeNewbie is a podcast for people who are just getting started with programming. I was excited about doing this podcast because I feel like often people don’t learn about things like computer networking for a long time (I didn’t learn anything about how TCP worked until I’d been programming for 10 years!) but I think a lot of systems-y concepts are both really interesting and pretty approachable.

I feel like there’s a certain segment of people who get into programming partly because they just want to know how things work (what is my computer DOING when I get a website?!?). Obviously I am a little like this, and I have a special love for networking because it’s EVERYWHERE and I find it very satisfying to know how it works. So I wanted to introduce a little bit of that to some beginning programmers.

I tried to keep it pretty introductory – if you’re interested in knowing how the internet works but are unclear on what “TCP” is, maybe this will help a little! I thought Saron did a fantastic job of asking questions throughout.

a few relevant links:

• computer networking zine I wrote Networking! ACK! has similar goals :)
• tcpdump zine
• how to send a file to your friend on a local network with netcat
• how traceroute works
• Networking for System Administrators (the only book about computer networking I’ve ever read. I liked it a lot and it helped me learn)