Web Inventor Admits // in Addresses Is Pointless

Berners-Lee wishes he could backtrack on backslashes
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 14, 2009 2:50 AM CDT
Web Inventor Admits // in Addresses Is Pointless
Berners-Lee regrets the huge amount of pointless keystrokes his backslashes have created.   (Shutter Stock)

Ever wonder what the // in web addresses is there for? So does the man who put the forwardslashes there in the first place. "Really, if you think about it, it doesn’t need the //," Tim Berners-Lee told a New York Times reporter at a tech conference last week. "I could have designed it not to have the //," he said, adding that when he was creating the network that evolved into today's Internet, he had no idea how much impact his choices would have on so many people. (More Tim Berners-Lee stories.)

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