This isn't a great list because it assumes far too much about what a name is. Patio11 wrote a great blog post about what developers frequently get wrong when it comes to people and names; http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...
Show HN: List of movie and book characters I use during application development
11–20 of 44 posts
Re: Show HN: List of movie and book characters I use during application development
#12Would you humor a fellow HNer and tell me if you're in your early forties?
I happen to be working on a toy machine learning project that, based on the fictional characters known by someone, predicts their approximate age. Your list is the first organic validation set that happened onto my machine!
Re: Show HN: List of movie and book characters I use during application development
#13Nice list. If I need to generate names for sample data I usually just use the Faker library.
When I'm writing database fixtures for use in tests, I like to manually choose names from movies/tv-shows for related entities.
For example for an Account with multiple Users I will pick Phil Dunphy for the owner role, Claire Dunphy for the admin role and Luke/Haley/Alex dunphy for regular user roles.
Re: Show HN: List of movie and book characters I use during application development
#14Nice list. If I need to generate names for sample data I usually just use the Faker library. When I'm writing database fixtures for use in tests, I like to manually choose names from movies/tv-shows for related entities. For example for an Account with multiple Users I will pick Phil Dunphy for the owner role, Claire Dunphy for the admin role and Luke/Haley/Alex dunphy for regular user roles.
> I like to manually choose names from movies/tv-shows
I knew I couldn't be the only one. And using family members to illustrate different user roles is quite clever.
Re: Show HN: List of movie and book characters I use during application development
#15Would you humor a fellow HNer and tell me if you're in your early forties? I happen to be working on a toy machine learning project that, based on the fictional characters known by someone, predicts their approximate age. Your list is the first organic validation set that happened onto my machine!
LOL yes.
Re: Show HN: List of movie and book characters I use during application development
#16Would you humor a fellow HNer and tell me if you're in your early forties? I happen to be working on a toy machine learning project that, based on the fictional characters known by someone, predicts their approximate age. Your list is the first organic validation set that happened onto my machine!
This is the most HN thing ever, I love it. Can't wait to see this public.
Re: Show HN: List of movie and book characters I use during application development
#17Would you humor a fellow HNer and tell me if you're in your early forties? I happen to be working on a toy machine learning project that, based on the fictional characters known by someone, predicts their approximate age. Your list is the first organic validation set that happened onto my machine!
LOL yes.
Excellent. The theory is that, for most people in the US (perhaps elsewhere?), one's reading / movie watching / tv watching tend to be clustered into specific time periods.
When Friends or Firefly were on, for example, I was watching a lot of TV (like you) because at that stage of my life I was settling into a long-term relationship (early twenties) and we found those to be mutually enjoyable things to watch. Movie watching tends to fall off around the time people start having kids. So far, on my friends-and-family (kids and grandparents alike) polls, it's pretty accurate.
Thanks again for answering :) I may just post my quick and dirty hack when I'm through playing with it.
Re: Show HN: List of movie and book characters I use during application development
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
LOL yes.
Excellent. The theory is that, for most people in the US (perhaps elsewhere?), one's reading / movie watching / tv watching tend to be clustered into specific time periods. When Friends or Firefly were on, for example, I was watching a lot of TV (like you) because at that stage of my life I was settling into a long-term relationship (early twenties) and we found those to be mutually enjoyable things to watch. Movie w…
I'm fresh out of college, and I'm curious if this would stand up with people that are my age and close-ish to my demographic. From my experience, I think our cultural experience is the file-sharing or "Netflix" generation. My friends and I all have deep connections to characters from 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s entertainment, because we have been able to access it all. I am definitely going to reference Flash Gordon, Mal Reynolds and Patrick Star in a poll of fictitious characters.
I don't know, it's just something that I'm curious about. I would love to take your test (although I am already primed by seeing the OP's list).
Re: Show HN: List of movie and book characters I use during application development
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Excellent. The theory is that, for most people in the US (perhaps elsewhere?), one's reading / movie watching / tv watching tend to be clustered into specific time periods. When Friends or Firefly were on, for example, I was watching a lot of TV (like you) because at that stage of my life I was settling into a long-term relationship (early twenties) and we found those to be mutually enjoyable things to watch. Movie w…
I'm fresh out of college, and I'm curious if this would stand up with people that are my age and close-ish to my demographic. From my experience, I think our cultural experience is the file-sharing or "Netflix" generation. My friends and I all have deep connections to characters from 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s entertainment, because we have been able to access it all. I am definitely going to reference Flash Gordon, Mal R…
I think there's a chance your cohort will have more people like this (that have great fondness for "older" characters and media) due to Netflix/streaming, but on the overall I think you're a subset. For every person who appreciates classics, there are ten that binge watch current/trendy/popular stuff only.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out with all of the great access to media history we have today!
Re: Show HN: List of movie and book characters I use during application development
#20Would you humor a fellow HNer and tell me if you're in your early forties? I happen to be working on a toy machine learning project that, based on the fictional characters known by someone, predicts their approximate age. Your list is the first organic validation set that happened onto my machine!
Fantastic. Want to try a smaller dataset? My stock names start with Alfred E. Neuman, George Tirebiter, and Ted Nugent.