People with names that break computers • Hacker News Board

Re: People with names that break computers

#31

Post by ryandrake » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 3:04 PM UTC

cdumler wrote: post #19

People do no have names that break computers. Programmers believe they have certain structures when they don't then his or her code fails. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

There should be an entire college course dedicated to all the various "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Xxxx" lists. I've seen so much horribly bad code that's supposed do handle times, dates, names, addresses, etc. The spec says "Store the user's name in the database" and the programmer simply allocates a string for First Name and a string for Last Name and calls it a day. What's needed is good unit tests and a corpus of test names that exercise as many edge cases as possible.

Re: People with names that break computers

#32

Post by Zikes » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 3:10 PM UTC

I have a coworker whose last name is Corp. He was unable to create a Google+ account for a couple years and had a bit of difficulty with his Facebook account because they assumed he was a business.

Re: People with names that break computers

#33

Post by klue07 » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 3:11 PM UTC

How is Null as a name a problem? Null value and null string are different.

Re: People with names that break computers

#34

Post by RijilV » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #10

Air Canada and several other airlines have for several years been unable to read my passport on the automated check in because I have a suffix in my name (II). I am told that "this happens with everyone who has a suffix", which just boggles my mind.

I have the same situation, though my suffix is less common. My strategy is to drop the suffix when purchasing a ticket, which has mixed results. Some airlines (United) remove the space between my last name and suffix when I do have to use it (International flights) which caused me some angst until I figured it out.

Re: People with names that break computers

#35

Post by maccard » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 3:13 PM UTC

klue07 wrote: post #33

How is Null as a name a problem? Null value and null string are different.

Did you look at the stack overflow link?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4456438/how-do-i-correctl...

Re: People with names that break computers

#36

Post by linuxlizard » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 3:13 PM UTC

Zikes wrote: post #32

I have a coworker whose last name is Corp. He was unable to create a Google+ account for a couple years and had a bit of difficulty with his Facebook account because they assumed he was a business.

Had a friend with last name of "Root". She worked as a UNIX admin back in the day. Had trouble off and on with her name.

Re: People with names that break computers

#37

Post by ghaff » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 3:18 PM UTC

isxek wrote: post #30

silveira wrote: post #28

I have a first name composed of two names, and one of them with an acute accent. This is enough to cause some of my credit cards to be printed with a repeated name because they assume my "second first name" to be a middle name too. The acute accent results in encoding problems once in a while. But nothing compares the problems that people with names longer than 30 characters have to face. Creating a SSN card, or driv…

And if you are naming kids and want to save them a lot of bureaucracy in their lives, give them short names. I think it depends. Sometimes it's helpful to give them names that are just long enough to make their identities unique, so when they apply for police clearances, for example, they are not mistaken for similarly-named people with criminal records, or even nasty reputations.

I suspect the worst case is when you have a name that is neither common nor unique that you share with someone who is notorious in some manner. I used to know someone who lived in the same city and shared a name with someone who was in the news for some unsavory activity related to a local sports team. He literally had death threat voicemails left on his phone.

Re: People with names that break computers

#38

Post by klue07 » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 3:20 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #35

klue07 wrote: post #33

How is Null as a name a problem? Null value and null string are different.

Did you look at the stack overflow link? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4456438/how-do-i-correctl...

Ah ok. Thanks for the link.

Re: People with names that break computers

#39

Post by sevensor » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 3:22 PM UTC

I received a Dutch surname as a second middle name. I can never use it -- the "Van" alone is enough to break things. But even without "Van", having two middle names usually does not compute. I've seen people who lack middle names entirely have the opposite problem and insert the middle initial "X" just to satisfy the system.

Re: People with names that break computers

#40

Post by Marazan » Fri, Mar 25, 2016, 3:22 PM UTC

teej wrote: post #29

cdumler wrote: post #19

People do no have names that break computers. Programmers believe they have certain structures when they don't then his or her code fails. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

For what it's worth, programmers do not have the tools to perfectly handle the complexity of human language. It's a hard problem.

A free text entry field would cover almost everyone.