4 ms·

I believe UUCP mail did it that way. At any rate, this is an address. There's a convention here. Do I write addresses as "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washin

I believe UUCP mail did it that way. At any rate, this is an address. There's a convention here. Do I write addresses as "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC, 20006, USA", or "USA, Washington DC, 20006, NW, Pennsylvania Avenue, 1600"?

Jacqued 14y ago
I've always felt like physical mail addresses were written backwards too. As it is, every word is meaningless until you have read what follows. It would make a lot of sense with internet subdomains, too. Although to me, WWW seems far more general than DE, so it would we www.de.google. Which they will probably take when this goes live, so...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- pixelbath 14y ago
  I suppose it's the way your brain maps it internally. To me, it makes sense to have the most granular things first, as those become what's important. To use physical addresses as an example, say I'm delivering a letter (I'm delivering this letter end-to-end by myself in this hypothetical scenario). Once I know the country, I don't need to check that information again. Once I'm down at the city level, that then becomes useless information, and so on. I'll grant that prepending "www" on every site doesn't make a great deal of sense, but when the "World Wide Web" came into existence as such, it made slightly more sense on the surface.
jgrahamc 14y ago
Sort of... UUCP worked by specifying the route the message had to take by a chain of machines that were connected to each other. So you'd have something like mainvax!bigserver!otherserver!theirvax!john
pm215 14y ago
However, that's not the only convention for postal addresses. In Japan they write them the other way around, starting with the prefecture and working down through city, subarea, block/building number and finally the addressee's name. I don't think it's the only country using major-to-minor order, although minor-to-major is more common.
- justincormack 14y ago
  And most of Europe does "rue Blah 1600"
  - SeanLuke 14y ago
    Well... the building number appears after the street, but beyond that it follows the standard address convention, does it not? Piazza di San Cosimato 63, 00153 Rome, Italy Also, I'm don't know if Japanese addresses are reversed in Japanese, but when the Japanese express them in latin scripts, they are always in standard address order clear down to floor numbers and room numbers. Here's Sony Computer Science Laboratories: 3-14-13, Higashigotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan Straightforward address ordering. At any rate, the IP address scheme was invented by Americans, so it seems natural that it'd use an American (and generally worldwide it seems, at least in roman scripts) address ordering.
    - pm215 14y ago
      Yes, I skipped the detail that Japanese addresses in Latin scripts are written the other way around. SCSL's address in native script as quoted on their webpage is 東京都品川区東五反田3-14-13 高輪ミューズビル (ie Tokyou-to Shinagawa-ku Higashigotanda 3-14-3 Takanawa Muuze biru).

Jacqued 14y ago

I've always felt like physical mail addresses were written backwards too. As it is, every word is meaningless until you have read what follows. It would make a lot of sense with internet subdomains, too. Although to me, WWW seems far more general than DE, so it would we www.de.google. Which they will probably take when this goes live, so...

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
pixelbath 14y ago
I suppose it's the way your brain maps it internally. To me, it makes sense to have the most granular things first, as those become what's important. To use physical addresses as an example, say I'm delivering a letter (I'm delivering this letter end-to-end by myself in this hypothetical scenario). Once I know the country, I don't need to check that information again. Once I'm down at the city level, that then becomes useless information, and so on. I'll grant that prepending "www" on every site doesn't make a great deal of sense, but when the "World Wide Web" came into existence as such, it made slightly more sense on the surface.

jgrahamc 14y ago

Sort of... UUCP worked by specifying the route the message had to take by a chain of machines that were connected to each other. So you'd have something like mainvax!bigserver!otherserver!theirvax!john

pm215 14y ago

However, that's not the only convention for postal addresses. In Japan they write them the other way around, starting with the prefecture and working down through city, subarea, block/building number and finally the addressee's name. I don't think it's the only country using major-to-minor order, although minor-to-major is more common.

justincormack 14y ago
And most of Europe does "rue Blah 1600"
- SeanLuke 14y ago
  Well... the building number appears after the street, but beyond that it follows the standard address convention, does it not? Piazza di San Cosimato 63, 00153 Rome, Italy Also, I'm don't know if Japanese addresses are reversed in Japanese, but when the Japanese express them in latin scripts, they are always in standard address order clear down to floor numbers and room numbers. Here's Sony Computer Science Laboratories: 3-14-13, Higashigotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan Straightforward address ordering. At any rate, the IP address scheme was invented by Americans, so it seems natural that it'd use an American (and generally worldwide it seems, at least in roman scripts) address ordering.
  - pm215 14y ago
    Yes, I skipped the detail that Japanese addresses in Latin scripts are written the other way around. SCSL's address in native script as quoted on their webpage is 東京都品川区東五反田3-14-13 高輪ミューズビル (ie Tokyou-to Shinagawa-ku Higashigotanda 3-14-3 Takanawa Muuze biru).