Developer Thought Stream

Semantic URLs have some great benefits. The most obvious one is SEO-friendliness (search engine optimization - Google simply likes semantic URLs better). Not only that but users tend to prefer semantic URLs when they come up in search results. However, assume for a moment that you're the user and you want to re-post a specific article...is it really a net benefit to make a longer URL like: http://www.dogs.com/articles/wiener-dogs-do-super-cute-things-when-you-play-with-them versus   http://www.dogs.com/articles/158 ? You may have made a trade-off here: SEO-friendliness versus ease of use. As a user, you probably already know the URL you are looking for, so that part is easy. You probably can guess that articles are under "/articles", so that part is easy as well. So sometimes it comes down to which is easier to use - a super-long article "slug" or a simple number. Ask yourself what happens when you want to send the link via text or Twitter or some othe...