It was all so unnecessary, it turns out. Those wasted seconds, collectively adding up to hours and days, typing in the two forward slashes (“//”) as part of website addresses. That’s what Internet guru Tim Berners-Lee has to say now, looking back on his early work creating the World Wide Web. The forward slashes were part of computer programming convention at the time, which explains how they got into the standard http:// when the Web was first launched. If he had it to do all over again, Berners-Lee says in an interview that he would drop the “//” for good.