It’s no longer a secret that Netflix has many secret categories that can be accessed by entering a specific code. However, these are not the only secrets of the platform. Indeed, Reddit users scoured the site to find other gems in the genre and were not disappointed. A few days ago a new discovery surprised many web developers.
It is especially easy to find this hidden page yourself. just write www.netflix.com/helloworld in your browser’s search bar. You will then find a completely blank page, except for one statement that may seem very mysterious to you if you have never been interested in programming: Good morning Monde!! (“Hello world !”). Even more surprising is that it weighs only 8 kilobytes.
So why does Netflix keep this useless page online?
Very quickly, “Hello world” is a very well-known phrase in the computer world, as it is often the first message we try to display when we try to program. In other words, this is usually the signature of a novice or experienced person learning a new programming language. So it’s especially surprising to see this on a site as popular as Netflix.
Is this a simple oversight by the developers when they launched the platform? Most probably. But another explanation convinced many computer scientists in a Reddit post. “This could be a bug, a training exercise, or a way to test part of the system. If this doesn’t work, I’m willing to bet a nominal amount that there is a CI pipeline or alert board that will be triggered.”says one Internet user.
Translation for beginners: This page can serve as a guide to Netflix. Due to its ridiculously small weight, it will be among the first to be affected by a network problem. This way, development teams are quickly alerted and can fix the problem in a short time. So 8 kilobytes is enough to keep one of the world’s most visited sites online.
Source : reddit
