11–20 of 128 posts
So I am glad I did not sweat over those, and got something up and running, and did not get bogged by some of those very difficult questions.
Hopefully for the projects that stick around I'll be able to do some clean-up...
After reading the Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, I wonder, what would you recommend as a universal way to store users's names? There seems to be two main options: Store the name in a single field, be correct but lose the option to sort the names reliably. Store the name in two fields, have the users bend over our western form standards but be able to search and sort easily. Do you have any real life expe…
After reading the Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, I wonder, what would you recommend as a universal way to store users's names? There seems to be two main options: Store the name in a single field, be correct but lose the option to sort the names reliably. Store the name in two fields, have the users bend over our western form standards but be able to search and sort easily. Do you have any real life expe…
It's unsolvable problem. Names are locale and context dependent and there is no way to translate any given name from it's canonical form (which is nonexistent) to any context you would need (except identity function obv).
So you store in-context representation(s) of name and don't transform ever. In practice that means you have one or two fields with no validation whatsoever and let user decide what to enter (while indicating what context it is!), or you apply whatever arbitrary limitation already present in system(s) you interface with. Which usually boils down do "bend over our western form standards".
I am always appalled when systems (built in the US) have difficulties with apostrophes in the names. I mean, have you missed all the Irish names that exist in the US? It would be "fair enough" forgetting about accents when computing resources were limited, but to not deal with apostrophes? Really? (I mean, ok, this story is not new, just look at the history of the https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fu63…
Also, should we treat ' and ’ as equivalent?
"Falsehoods programmers believe about life and people outside California."
"Okay, you don't need bitcoin if you are not sending your money to imaginary places like Iran and N'Korea"
"Okay, you don't need bitcoin in Europe or US unless one party in your transaction has surname that starts with Ass and ends with ange"
"What do you mean by saying that banks abroad could refuse to open you account if you are US citizen"
"Capital controls and war? What you are, a character in a Neal Stephenson novel or Python developer?"
Very true, we all know there are 92 genders
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Facts-Fallacies-Software-Engineering-...