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Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)

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Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)

#11

Post by majewsky »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #9
somenomadicguy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could change #40 to: You need your customers' names. I look at a name the same way I look at a username, more frequently than not it's a hassle you don't need to solve. In many applications a username, or even better, an email address, is the best UUID for a user. We design apps to collect names by default, even when we don't need them and will never use them for any purpose, or at worse, the purpose we use them…

Suppose someone calls in and tells you they want to cancel but forgot which email address they used for signup, what is the next piece of information you ask them?

The easiest solution is to have their address on file, and send them an actual letter to confirm the cancellation.

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)

#12

Post by jbb555 »

Ugh this again. No. People have a first name, and they have a last name. Each name consists of a reasonable number of ascii characters. If they decide they are special and don't wish to conform to this scheme how is this my problem?

What if I decide my "name" is the first billion digits of PI? Are you going to add that to the list of names that you need to support? No?

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)

#13

Post by thr0waway1239 »

majewsky wrote: post #11
thr0waway1239 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose someone calls in and tells you they want to cancel but forgot which email address they used for signup, what is the next piece of information you ask them?

The easiest solution is to have their address on file, and send them an actual letter to confirm the cancellation.

And if there are multiple tenants (e.g. roommates), who will it be addressed to? Just wondering if the issue is as simple as leaving the entire name field as a nullable string.

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)

#15

Post by thr0waway1239 »

jbb555 wrote: post #12

Ugh this again. No. People have a first name, and they have a last name. Each name consists of a reasonable number of ascii characters. If they decide they are special and don't wish to conform to this scheme how is this my problem? What if I decide my "name" is the first billion digits of PI? Are you going to add that to the list of names that you need to support? No?

I hope you are not downvoted.

In economics, people talk about the problem of 'sorting and labeling' and how that is an unconscious reaction (which does unfortunately lead to bias) but it helps immensely in the overall productivity of an entire system.

When people expect you to design special systems which increases the overall entropy, I wonder if they realize that you too incur a cost for creating that system. I say this as someone whose name is constantly butchered during my dealings with American entities, and I am not generally asking them to modify their system to accommodate my name so it remains unaffected. Thankfully, in most cases, I actually have a choice of whether I should continue having dealings with such entities. (I don't know what happens in cases where you don't, like, say the DMV).

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)

#17

Post by CarolineW »

Previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11370046 (1 comment)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10255610 (13 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10094603 (1 comment)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9239656 (3 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365517 (2 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4079837 (5 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472 (138 comments)

Also:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8909878

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7063812

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5994098

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2898965

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)

#18

Post by aninhumer »

dagw wrote: post #10
somenomadicguy wrote: post #2

I used to date a woman whose hippy mother decided that last names were slavery, she's the person who turned me onto this list. The experience really opened my eyes into the anglo/usa-centric nature of most app development best practices, and how complicated it must be to work as a localization engineer. She suffered quite a bit, any call to a government agency, especially FASFA student loans (btw fuck you FASFA, fuck…

Tangentially, I'm always slightly uncertain about what to put when asked about my "first name" on official forms. While I have a first name it is not and has never been the name anybody has used for me. I've always gone by my second name, and if you where to ask for me by my first name no one would know whom you are talking about. Basically do you want the the string returned by name.split()[0] or do you want the str…

In most official cases, what you they mostly want is the string which matches the one in other official documents about you. They will often also use it in communications, but having a separate field for chosen name would probably be more hassle than it's worth.

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)

#19

Post by vidarh »

dagw wrote: post #10
somenomadicguy wrote: post #2

I used to date a woman whose hippy mother decided that last names were slavery, she's the person who turned me onto this list. The experience really opened my eyes into the anglo/usa-centric nature of most app development best practices, and how complicated it must be to work as a localization engineer. She suffered quite a bit, any call to a government agency, especially FASFA student loans (btw fuck you FASFA, fuck…

Tangentially, I'm always slightly uncertain about what to put when asked about my "first name" on official forms. While I have a first name it is not and has never been the name anybody has used for me. I've always gone by my second name, and if you where to ask for me by my first name no one would know whom you are talking about. Basically do you want the the string returned by name.split()[0] or do you want the str…

I'd say you want to be consistent within the same context. Otherwise it's their own fault if they can't ask you for something more specific.

E.g. if they want a display name, they should ask for a display name. Most of the time people need only a few different roles, and you can always pre-populate default values based on doing a simple name split and letting people suggest more approriate alternatives.

Upside is that asking for specifically what they need addresses other concerns, such as e.g. parents signing up to something on behalf of their children, or someone needing to put another name of a shipping label.

Re: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (2010)

#20

Post by danbruc »

This makes me think you should maybe just have a few fields for names for different use cases and maybe provide an example next to it to see it in context.

  Name on Invoices       John Miller, PhD   John Miller, PhD / Ocean Drive 13 / Tahoa 12345

  Name for Phone Calls   Mr. Miller         Hello Mr. Miller, how may I help you?
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