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Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

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Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#71

Post by drewzero1 »

emodendroket wrote: post #36

> This particular example name [Tanaka Tarou 田中太郎] is perhaps best known as the name of an alien in an anime series (and a manga). There have also been real people with this name. Huh? That's a bit like saying the name "John Doe" is "perhaps best known from being the name of a character in a movie." It's just the stand-in, "generic" Japanese name that's used in examples. If an alien had the name in a cartoon it was p…

> the way the characters in Third Rock from the Sun were named Tom, Dick, and Harry.

Wow, I've watched that show for years and never caught that. I love the ordinary alien name trope, and my favorite incarnation is Ford Prefect from the Hitchhikers Guide series. (While I imagine it was a great gag in the UK for the alien to believe that cars are the dominant life form on earth, the joke was a bit lost on US readers because the model was not popular here.)

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#73

Post by notamy »

spacechild1 wrote: post #61
bikeshaving wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something is terribly wrong with scrolling on that page.

For me scrolling just doesn't work at all...

Oh thank goodness, I thought it was just me. Dragging the scrollbar worked, but the scroll wheel didn't. Strangest thing I've ever experienced.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#74

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

iso1210 wrote: post #48

Started to read, was interesting, but then I scrolled, and the whole page seems broken. Life's too short to deal with that nonsense.

The arrow keys work. As does Firefox reader mode. But my mouse wheel scrolls by sixteen lines!

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#75

Post by watersb »

earthboundkid wrote: post #72

How do you store Queen Elizabeth II?

A friend of mine went to school with the son of an exiled king. Everything was fine -- this fellow had a proper passport, visa, etc. I suppose being a prince helps a bit with nation-state level paperwork.

The problem occurred when the prince had to seek urgent care, the Emergency Room of a rural hospital.

They needed first name, last name. The prince didn't have a way to fill out the family name, the last name. English was not his first language, he was bleeding, and it was a late night for everyone all around.

So it became a real argument. Finally my friend leans over and says "SMITH. His last name is Smith!"

The orderly was able to fill out the form, and everyone was better off.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#76

Post by brigandish »

spiffytech wrote: post #59
franciscop wrote: post #55

"with examples" => Follows up by not giving examples to a bunch of entries "Confound your cultural relativism! People in my society, at least, agree on one commonly accepted standard for names. And will your software only be dealing with people named by your society?" "I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad words contains no people’s names in it. This is a common mistake – many “bad words” are not bad words…

> People in my society, at least, agree on one commonly accepted standard for names. For context, patio11, the author of the original list (without examples), emigrated to Japan and has noted that it is (was?) common for computer systems there to have no idea what to do with his English name. This included his Japanese employer, who apparently assumed all employees would have Japanese names. > I can safely assume tha…

How I wish this article and information gets translated into Japanese…

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#77

Post by Izkata »

> People whose names break my system are weird outliers. They should have had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎.

> No, your system is badly designed.

> This particular example name is perhaps best known as the name of an alien in an anime series (and a manga). There have also been real people with this name.

I feel like the author of this page missed the original joke here: The sentence is in English so the reader is primed to expect an English name, or at least something representable in ascii/latin characters, and then it drops something totally different to challenge the reader's expectations.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#78

Post by dahfizz »

mcphage wrote: post #41
emodendroket wrote: post #36

> This particular example name [Tanaka Tarou 田中太郎] is perhaps best known as the name of an alien in an anime series (and a manga). There have also been real people with this name. Huh? That's a bit like saying the name "John Doe" is "perhaps best known from being the name of a character in a movie." It's just the stand-in, "generic" Japanese name that's used in examples. If an alien had the name in a cartoon it was p…

> What do you want me to do about it? When you write code that accepts names, don’t bake in assumptions that violate these falsehoods.

How do you even accept names if the name is not representable in any character encoding?

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#79

Post by Izkata »

notamy wrote: post #73
spacechild1 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me scrolling just doesn't work at all...

Oh thank goodness, I thought it was just me. Dragging the scrollbar worked, but the scroll wheel didn't. Strangest thing I've ever experienced.

Javascript-based scrolljacking meant to enforce inertial smooth scrolling. Even when it works (it's glitchy on this page and doesn't always activate for me) it makes the page painful to use.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about names – with examples (2018)

#80

Post by Izkata »

DonaldFisk wrote: post #32

Did I miss the falsehood about family name always following personal name? (Doesn't apply to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Hungarian names.)

Since they do mention Klingon in one of them, I kinda also want to add to yours: Bajorans also put family name first.
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