The “extension” .aspx == ASP.NET “page” – i.e., it is an ASP.NET compiler page/document…just like any “page” that ends in an extension – it’s specific to the language. Ex- “.php” (PHP page) or “.jsp” (Java Servlet page). There is nothing clever or intentional by MS in calling it that. It is what the server is config’d to look for when running .NET apps under MS IIS w/ the .NET framework.

The URL of the blog is quite literal, as well- nothing extra being done on MS’s part there. “jensenh”‘s blog lives in the “blogs” directory @ the domain “msdn”. The article referenced is in the archives for 2005 – 11 – 08 – the numbers are what the app that does the archiving (and publishing) has determined the article number to be. Nothing crazy going on…

You do see this kind of URL use by Java folks IF they are using JSP to run their Java apps…of course, they can use any web server based language to execute their Java bits if they need to, as Java itself isn’t a server-side web language- it needs to be instantiated by the likes of JSP/ASP/PHP, etc. Python folks (and Ruby, to a degree) use frameworks that don’t require documents to have physical names with extensions…a good example would be that Python frameworks such as Django compile the needed data when the server calls for it (much like ASP.NET), but, spits it out in a pre-determined directory structure (http://www.lawrence.com/events/2006/feb/23/12776/) where no “file” needs to be called.