HTTP proxy is a server that acts as an intermediary between your computer and the internet, handling all your HTTP requests and responses. It's like having a personal assistant that does all the talking to the web for you, so you can sit back and relax (or, more likely, keep furiously coding away on your latest project).

How to use it in a sentence

• "I had to set up an HTTP proxy at my last job because the corporate firewall kept blocking my access to Stack Overflow - apparently they thought I was 'wasting time' instead of 'efficiently solving problems'."

• "I'm pretty sure the reason the new guy's code is so slow is because he's routing everything through a free HTTP proxy in Uzbekistan to get around the IP rate limits on the Twitter API."

If you actually want to learn more...

• Martin Kleppmann has an interesting article on building your own mini Google using web crawl data. He discusses traversing the web link graph and using publicly available CommonCrawl data to analyze which pages link to each other.

• Paul Graham maintains a list of spam-fighting resources that mention some proxy-related techniques, like the TarProxy system for catching spammers. Worth a look if you enjoy the eternal battle of wits between spammers and filter creators.

• For a deeper dive into Lisp and AI (which has nothing to do with HTTP proxies, but hey, it's my dictionary), check out Paul Graham's collection of Lisp and AI resources. Plenty of rabbit holes to fall down when you need a break from worrying about proxies.

Note: the Developer Dictionary is in Beta. Please direct feedback to skye@statsig.com.