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I couldn't debug the code because of my name

mikolaj-kaminski.com

41–50 of 300 posts

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#41
post #9

Using non-ascii characters in file paths, toolchain config files, and other non-display contexts is just asking for trouble, even if it is your name...

This is the modern, post-ASCII computing world, we should no longer be willing to settle for the lowest-common-denominator of ASCII-only strings. There's no excuse for actively supported, paid products to have these problems today.

True. But these actively supported, paid products build upon layers and layers of no-longer-supported, free/opensource products. Good luck fixing them.

Not saying that this is OK, just explaining why using non-ascii characters, in this day and age, is still asking for trouble.

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#42
post #9

Using non-ascii characters in file paths, toolchain config files, and other non-display contexts is just asking for trouble, even if it is your name...

This is the modern, post-ASCII computing world, we should no longer be willing to settle for the lowest-common-denominator of ASCII-only strings. There's no excuse for actively supported, paid products to have these problems today.

Especially if those products are developed by a company from Russia, where Cyrillic is used. For me, a Russian myself, this situation is honestly ridiculous.

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#43

Isn't this one of those "100 things Programmers don't know about People's Names" things? Like the poor, it will be with us always.

I don't know, it's just a Unicode character? Not even a newer one, it's just 2 utf8 bytes. Pretty much everything should support that in 2021. When I think of 100 things I think of stuff like "some people spell their name in all lowercase and get really funny if you change it"

windows probably defaults to latin-1

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#44
post #2

It's somewhat common to see videogames issue a patch shortly after release where they fix crashes due to non-ASCII Windows usernames or non-English locales. I'm not sure what the root cause of the confusion is, other than text strings being hard in general.

It's also a common thing that Silent (aka CookiePLMonster) fixes in the games he patches.

See for example: - https://cookieplmonster.github.io/2020/05/23/silentpatch-maf... - https://cookieplmonster.github.io/2021/02/27/silentpatch-yak...

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#45
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the solution is for the user to change their entire windows account name, rather than handling common characters in your code?

When you have non-standard characters in your name you quickly learn to never use them in computers since even though most systems works fine, some don't. And you can't fix all the thousands of systems your name has to interact with. I even had trouble booking flight tickets since their security system couldn't parse my name, and then had to go through some special security check due to it returning errors. After tha…

They're not non-standard characters. They're just as much a part of the Polish alphabet as 'a' and 'b' are.

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#46
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the solution is for the user to change their entire windows account name, rather than handling common characters in your code?

When you have non-standard characters in your name you quickly learn to never use them in computers since even though most systems works fine, some don't. And you can't fix all the thousands of systems your name has to interact with. I even had trouble booking flight tickets since their security system couldn't parse my name, and then had to go through some special security check due to it returning errors. After tha…

> When you have non-standard characters in your name

'standard' by what measure? Ł is more standard than X or Q in the polish alphabet.

~ Sincerely, a person whose name contains „ń” and therefore had to deal with this bullshit his entire life.

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, it's just a Unicode character? Not even a newer one, it's just 2 utf8 bytes. Pretty much everything should support that in 2021. When I think of 100 things I think of stuff like "some people spell their name in all lowercase and get really funny if you change it"

windows probably defaults to latin-1

the default windows encoding is UTF-16, a long time ago it was Windows-1252 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#49

Many years ago I could not access the apple developer panel because of the umlaut in my last name. It was eventually fixed but I was quite surprised that such a large company would run into such a basic issue.

My last name has an apostrophe in it which Apple apparently loves to embed directly into their JavaScript unescaped. For a long time neither I nor Apple could look up AppleCare status on my stuff as they were all linked to my Apple ID. The portal would thus require me to login, but then would just show a partially rendered page as my last name was causing an JS syntax error.

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#50
post #38
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their URL is even mikolaj-kaminski.com . I get its annoying, but I would never use non-ascii chars in a username / file path.

"You're holding it wrong" The problem is the technology, not the user using it in a reasonable way. ł is older than computers and the only reason computers struggle with it is lack of foresight or choosing to make things harder for most of the world by some of the people involved early on.

Obviously the IDE is at fault here. Rider has a bug with Unicode.

BUT, there is an easy workaround to avoid all Unicode related bugs: don't use Unicode. If that's morally objectionable for you, then you can keep fighting this fight.

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