> Try and explain to the average user why URLs on HN look like this:
That's easy. "The information following the domain name is used to route your request to the appropriate destination".
> Each one of these is a completely different implementation detail which the average user doesn't care about and, honestly, won't necessarily understand without understanding the underlying technology behind these sites.
Why do they have to understand the "underlying technology" at all?
If you think physical addresses are simpler, you'd be wrong:
Sgt John Smith
Headquarters Company
7th Army Training Center
ATTN: AETT-AG
Unit 28130
APO AE 09114-8130
or:
Mr John Doe
CMR 333 Box 2345
APO AE 09903-0024
or:
John Doe
C/O Acme, Inc.
STE 12
123 Main St NW
Placename, State 12345-1234
or:
Jane Doe
P.O. Box 562
Placename, State 12345
or (this is dual addressing, guess what it means? it doesn't mean the P.O. box is at 123 Main St NW):
Jane Doe
123 Main St NW
P.O. Box 562
Placename, State 12345-1234
or:
Don Johnson
Professor, GIS Studies and Internet Arguments
UCIA Computer Science Department
5th Floor Rockefeller Building East
C/O UCIA
12345 Main Address Street
Placename, State, 12345-1234
These are complicated, and we haven't even delved into common abbreviations, street layout consistency, relative addressing, or, god forbid, international addressing.
Yet somehow people write, address, and successfully send mail, every single day. They get in their cars and navigate the interstates and the weird street grids and one-way streets that they're unfamiliar with, and eventually wind up at the right place.
Or, they plug the address into their GPS and get there, without ever really understanding how the GPS performs the routing, just that it does, but still fully cognizant of what the addresses mean, even if they don't understand the system under which they were allocated.
I don't think your argument holds water; not even a little.
Well, you're absolutely right that I don't understand most of those addresses.
You're right that I could still send them mails though, in exactly the same way people use URL's - rote copying them, then letting the technology (or mail system) work its magic. I don't need to understand your PO box example to get it working.