Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses • Hacker News Board

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

#61

Post by a3n » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 4:10 PM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #51

That article can also be read as a list of things that need to be fixed by the various postal systems. We can issue addresses to computers, many of which cannot be considered to be in a fixed place, yet somehow we can't issue a permanent, unique address to something that's not likely to move around much.

Zip+4 was/is an attempt to get close to that, but not right up to it. I have no idea what my +4 is. In the two or three cases over many years that I actually had to fill it in (and cared enough to continue), I had to look on the USPS web site.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

#62

Post by learnstats2 » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 4:23 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #16

nvivo wrote: post #10

There are so many misconceptions from developers, even more when building apps used worldwide. If you plan to accept data from different countries, free text with no validation is the only acceptable answer. I remember once we had to remove validation from names because some countries don't even have last names, and others have real names with two or even one characters.

free text with no validation is the only acceptable answer. Unfortunately, it's not an acceptable answer in practice. In my experience, users aren't clear what to do when presented with a free-form, multi-line text box in which they can enter their address. This results in frequent missing data – users aren't aware they need to include a postal code, or county, or country… This is probably because users are generally…

> In my experience, users aren't clear what to do when presented with a free-form, multi-line text box in which they can enter their address. This results in frequent missing data – users aren't aware they need to include a postal code, or county, or country…

Suggestion: users are deliberately not inserting data which is not relevant to the service they are getting.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

#63

Post by hawkice » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 4:25 PM UTC

A falsehood only distantly alluded to:

That people have addresses at all, or can describe their residence in an unambiguous or clear way (even using GPS coordinates).

I used to live in a place I couldn't even remotely give directions to. It was deep within a neighborhood of a poorer country, none of the streets had names, none of the buildings are numbered. I lived in an building where none of the apartments had numbers or names.

If I wanted something delivered, I would go to a local shop for the company delivering it, and show my ID, and they would have it routed there if it wasn't in the building already.

If you wanted a billing address for, I don't know, tracking me down, initiating lawsuits, something like that? I honestly just assume that's impossible.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

#64

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 4:33 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #57

jacquesm wrote: post #19

Patrick has an excellent variation on this theme: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... I live on a road that has two sets of numbers, both identical (but several hundred meters removed from each other) in two different towns but with the same name. Getting mail and packages delivered here is for want of a better word a challenge.

Is it because the post sucks at its job? I would expect this to be handled correctly for the sole reason that you could have two unconnected roads with the same name in two different cities and end up in essentially the same situation, no?

I think if they would be further away from each other it would be less of a problem.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

#65

Post by arethuza » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 4:33 PM UTC

UrMomReadsHN wrote: post #30

FooBarWidget wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a form for signing an agreement. If they don't fill in their full address then the contract may not be legally binding.

Simple clerical errors rarely invalidate a contract. I'm not a lawyer though so I don't actually know. I would have done address line 1, address line 2, line3, etc. I think people got confused by your form because they are used to typing in 1234 Sample Street expecting to be asked the rest of the information further down. The other option would be on form submit to show what they have put in and say "make sure this i…

Don't know about the US, but here in the UK having an incorrect address in a contract may make it trickier to enforce a court decision against a company as certain kinds of documents used in the court process are only valid if served to the Registered Office of the company.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

#66

Post by rmc » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

As someone from Ireland, a country with unusual addresses, this is spot on.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

#67

Post by userbinator » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 4:43 PM UTC

hawkice wrote: post #63

A falsehood only distantly alluded to: That people have addresses at all, or can describe their residence in an unambiguous or clear way (even using GPS coordinates). I used to live in a place I couldn't even remotely give directions to. It was deep within a neighborhood of a poorer country, none of the streets had names, none of the buildings are numbered. I lived in an building where none of the apartments had numb…

even using GPS coordinates

How can GPS coordinates be ambiguous? I can see different units of measure/notations being used, and the accuracy might be a problem for extremely close addresses, but wasn't it the point of GPS to provide an exact reference for any point on the planet?

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

#68

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 4:49 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #40

FooBarWidget wrote: post #5

I read this article a long time ago and I took it seriously. So instead of asking for address, postal/zip code, city, state/province, I just put up a big text area labeled "Full address" so that people have complete freedom about what to fill in. 80% of the users ended up only filling in their street address, not their postal/zip code, city and state/province, even though they're from countries where (most?) addresse…

This is where most of the "falsehoods programmers believe" articles fall flat. The thing to do is not try to design a single form that accommodates every possible address or name or whatever. The thing to do is examine your use case, design a form that works for, say, 99.9% or more of the people you want it to reach, and then if you really want to get the last 0.1% have someone who can do customer service and has acc…

"Punt and let customer support handle it" is a pretty lazy solution, in my view. Additionally, what a developer might think of as a "99.9%" solution is more often than not a 99% solution, or a 90% solution. With enough customers, dealing with everyone who can't use your slapped-together form will be more expensive than doing it right.

Software doesn't become great by assuming someone else will handle the edge cases and details, although you may get away with selling it for a while until your user base grows.

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

#69

Post by cstigler » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 4:57 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #67

hawkice wrote: post #63

A falsehood only distantly alluded to: That people have addresses at all, or can describe their residence in an unambiguous or clear way (even using GPS coordinates). I used to live in a place I couldn't even remotely give directions to. It was deep within a neighborhood of a poorer country, none of the streets had names, none of the buildings are numbered. I lived in an building where none of the apartments had numb…

even using GPS coordinates How can GPS coordinates be ambiguous? I can see different units of measure/notations being used, and the accuracy might be a problem for extremely close addresses, but wasn't it the point of GPS to provide an exact reference for any point on the planet?

GPS coordinates don't generally include altitude, correct? If he's in a six-floor apartment, how could GPS define which floor he's in?

Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

#70

Post by dfranke » Sun, Jan 18, 2015, 5:03 PM UTC

hawkice wrote: post #63

A falsehood only distantly alluded to: That people have addresses at all, or can describe their residence in an unambiguous or clear way (even using GPS coordinates). I used to live in a place I couldn't even remotely give directions to. It was deep within a neighborhood of a poorer country, none of the streets had names, none of the buildings are numbered. I lived in an building where none of the apartments had numb…

Furthermore, just because you don't have an address doesn't mean you can't receive mail! At least as recently as a few decades ago, there were rural communities in the US where nobody had a street address; the postal service knew where everybody lived and would deliver mail given just a name and town. I'm not sure whether this arrangement still exists in the US, but I'm pretty sure it still does in Ireland and probably elsewhere.