How Domains Became Backwards

Comments

26 responses to “How Domains Became Backwards”

1. 

   foobar

   2013-02-17

   This is wrong.

   Addresses are written from the most specific to the most unspecific since time immemorial:
   Jack B. Ripper
   17b Something Rd
   AB17CD London
   Great Britain
   Earth.

   I think both directions have merit and there are valid precedents for both. None of both options is in any way “backwards”.

   Reply
   1. 

      jeff

      2013-02-17

      check Japanese addresses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system

      Reply
      1. 

         Foo

         2013-02-18

         Japanese addresses are only written this way in *Japanese*. In romanization or English hey’re written exactly like western addresses. Most specific to most general.

         Reply
         1. 

            Jim

            2013-02-18

            Actually I am seen them go both ways once anglicized. I have been in Japan for years.

            Reply
      2. 

         zhou

         2013-02-18

         Native Chinese here, all Chinese address’ are written in most general to most specific order. Country->province->city->district->street->number.

         Reply
   2. 

      david

      2013-02-17

      That’s true, and it’s the basis of why emails were “user at location” in the first place. However in the context of other computerise hierarchies it is the odd one out:

      “http://subdomain.domain.tld/major/minor.minorest” – there is a order reversal between domain and path.

      Exactly the same occurs with scp parameters: “scp minor.ext subdomain.domain.tld:/major/minor.minorest”

      Reply
      1. 

         Anonymous

         2013-02-17

         > it’s the basis of why emails were “user at location” in the first place

         That and to allow for the natural interpretation of ‘at’. If email addresses had used the same direction of URLs, they almost certainly wouldn’t have used ‘@’. For example, they might have used ‘!’; in fact, they did. 🙂

         Reply
   3. 

      dm

      2013-02-17

      In English speaking countries. Not in some others.

      Reply
   4. 

      Drew Goodwin

      2013-02-17

      Like URLs, I see addresses written from specific to in-specific as being backwards because of how they must be routed to reach their destination. Take your example. If I were to mail you a package, it would first be routed to Great Britain, then to London, Then to that specific zip code, to your street, and finally to your house. That’s exactly the opposite order of how it is read.

      The same often true for dates, but in terms of order of magnitude.

      The backwards nature of these things has implications beyond just how they are read. For example, such data often has to be reformatted for solving problems such as sorting. In my studies I have also found some cultural correlations as well. Consider Japanese society, which writes both addresses and dates in order of decreasing magnitude or specificity, and which also happens to have a collectivistic culture with smaller emphasis on the individual.

      Reply
      1. 

         Chris

         2013-02-17

         Perhaps apropos of nothing, but pretty much every programmer I know also prefer dates in “least->most specific” notation: 04-04-2013 is ambiguous (if you think it’s not, your thinking just might be a product of your locale); 2013-04-04 is definitely favoured (I could find no locale that uses YYYY/-DD/-MM).

         Reply
         1. 

            david

            2013-02-18

            As you say its a matter of locale. Like endianness its arbitrary; its the inconsistency that caught my eye.

            Reply
      2. 

         The Dread Pirate Roberts

         2013-02-17

         I think it is far more likely that this is due to the way that routing information works. Especially if you make the, quite reasonable, assumption that most information is likely to be local.

         Both the post and internet data goes to a local “exchange” first, and if it is possible to determine where to send it locally, that is done. If not, send it “up the chain” to a less specific exchange which can pass it back to the appropriate local environment.

         Why should mail first go to the continental mail exchange centre to be sorted by continent, then country, then state, etc when all you really wanted to do was send a nice letter to Mr Hill down Frenchman’s lane on the other side of your local village?

         That part of things has been so long-solved that most of us in the industry don’t have to worry about it. We are left with issues of sorting addresses.

         Similarly with dates…it’s a human thing. When talking to someone and they ask “When are you leaving for Antartica?” you may answer “On the 25th”. That’s enough information, a lot of the time. Not many of us are going to then ask “But what year? What month?”. Of course, it’s not enough for a context-less program so we complain about having to reverse the date, or add extra context.

         These are no longer big problems.

         Reply
   5. 

      Guni Gugu

      2013-02-18

      “Addresses are written from the most specific to the most unspecific since time immemorial”

      Except for time itself:
      01.02.2013 – which should read 1st of February 2013,
      except in the US it reads January 2nd 2013, which is nuts…

      Reply
      1. 

         Rob

         2013-02-19

         You mean 2013.02.01, february 1st, 2013. Right?

         Reply
   6. 

      Blecki

      2013-02-19

      They actually aren’t. Postal addresses in (most) English-speaking nations mix it up too. They go name, number, street, local, state or province, postal code. Except… that postal code is less general than the province, and it’s usually redundant.

      Reply
2. 

   Internet User

   2013-02-17

   Thanks for sharing such a valuable information.

   Reply
3. 

   Nitpicker

   2013-02-17

   This is a clearly a byproduct of the right-to-left language of the designers of these systems.
   You meant left-to-right.

   Reply
   1. 

      david

      2013-02-17

      Thanks, fixed.

      Reply
4. 

   Han

   2013-02-17

   Your link to RFC 822 is broken (missing a colon ‘:’).

   Reply
5. 

   Michael Madden

   2013-02-17

   As an illustration of how this choice was somewhat arbitrary, it’s worth noting that at around the same time, JANET in the UK was using the opposite convention: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET_NRS

   Reply
6. 

   Mike Leach

   2013-02-17

   Java Developers staring at com.domain.specific namespaces are somewhat preconditioned to examining this discrepancy.

   Reply
7. 

   Colin

   2013-02-17

   Embarrassed to say as soon as RFC comes up I start to go a little cross-eyed…

   Reply
8. 

   z

   2013-02-18

   No offense, but this is a stupid, uninformed article. DNS delegations are progressive, at no time were Cerf@ARPA.ISI or ARPA.CERF@ISI contemplated, and I think you know that, because of your “Here were some options they may have thought of:” caveat.

   Reply
   1. 

      david

      2013-02-18

      From the RFC:

      These basically involved adding more hierarchical name information either to the right or the left of the @, with the “higher order” portion rightmost or leftmost.

      Reply
   2. 

      Jim Kendall

      2019-12-01

      You do realize how silly it looks to say “No offense” and then call someone stupid, right?

      Reply
9. 

   Sopol

   2013-02-18

   Who gives a flying f*ck

   Reply