[z_open]

Even if we ignore solutions other languages have come up with, it's even worse that they landed on // for the syntax given that it's apparently used the same way for real comments.

[WCSTombs]

But those are two different slashes? \\ for strings and // for comments?

[IshKebab]

Yeah I agree \\ is not the best choice visually (and because it looks quite similar to //

I would have probably gone with ` or something.

[n42]

> it's even worse that they landed on // for the syntax

.. it is using \\

[hinkley]

I worked with browsers since before most people knew what a browser was and it will never cease to amaze me how often people confuse slash and backslash, / and \

It’s some sort of mental glitch that a number of people fall into and I have absolutely no idea why.

[Mawr]

I doubt those very people would confuse the two when presented with both next to each other: / \ / \. The issue is, they're not characters used day-to-day so few people have made the association that the slash is the one going this way / and not the one going the other way \. They may not even be aware that both exist, and just pick the first slash-like symbol they see on their keyboards without looking further.

[Twey]

I wonder if it's dyslexia-adjacent. Dyslexic people famously have particular difficulty distinguishing rotated and reflected letterforms.

[hinkley]

Could be. The frequency is such that it could be dyslexics. It's not all the time, but it's a steady rate of incidence.

[quesera]

I think in the 90's it was just people repeating a pattern they learned from Windows/DOS.

It used to grate on my nerves to hear people say, e.g. "H T T P colon backslash backslash yahoo dot com".

But I think they always typed forward slash, like they knew the correct slash to use based on the context, but somehow always spoke it in DOSish.