Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names

Jamie points out this interesting article about how hard it is for programmers to get names right. Since software ultimately is used by and for humans, and we humans are pretty tightly linked to our names (whatever the language, spelling, or orthography), this is a big deal. This piece notes some of the ways that names get mishandled, and suggests rules of thumb (in the form of anti-suggestions) to encourage programmers to handle names more gracefully.

Comments

Dumbfuck summary

[oldhack]

Names of what?!

Article makes wrong assumption about software.

[Vellmont]

Software is NOT designed to be perfect and cover every case. Have a numeral in your name? Too bad. Need some names to be case sensitive, and others case insensitive? Sucks to be you. Have a 200 character name that doesn't fit in the 100 characters the designers thought no crazy person would ever have? Tough.

I started reading through the list, and it's just ridiculous. There's a few good points, like names don't change, or names are unique. But they're so obvious that the vast majority of the times it's not a big problem. More often it's just a matter of training the data edit/entry folks how to change someones name, or how to not assume a name is a sole identifier.

But assuming the worst and trying to design a system that'll allow people's names to be Chinese characters when you don't do business in China, have presence in China, or ever ever plan to? That's ridiculous. Software doesn't have to be perfect out of the shoot. It should be adaptable though if some unforeseen shortcoming becomes a larger problem. Gee, I guess if you ever chose to do business in China and need Chinese character names you might have to re-write part of the damn software. Oh well, that's what software developers are FOR!

If you don't even HAVE a name, then I submit you're crazier than the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince. At least HE had a name, though it was an unpronounceable symbol. The world can't accommodate every possibility, and software is no exception.

Re:Article makes wrong assumption about software.

[Trepidity]

Most Chinese emigrants to countries that use a Roman alphabet are perfectly capable of writing their name in Roman characters if they need to. If they weren't, they wouldn't have been able to get visas and get into the country in the first place.

Yeah, article is kind of asinine

[Trepidity]

He's essentially arguing that, because names vary a lot and are complex, your software should never do anything useful with them. Sorry, but that's a stupid answer. In a lot of systems, being able to sort by surname may well be more important than being able to handle people who claim they have no surname.

Of course, you shouldn't gratuitously do stupid things, and interfaces should aim to be relatively clear. But most people can figure out how to enter their names into relatively standardized forms, and those that don't should probably figure out how.

Irish need not log in?

[thepainguy]

My last name is O'Leary and over the past 5 years web sites have not gotten any better, and arguably have gotten worse, at handling the apostrophe in my last name

Help me Slashdot, you're my only hope.

Why do programmers get the blame?

[justfred]

I code to spec. The product and marketing departments write the spec (what little there is); the QA department amends the spec with overly specific test cases. I suggest that the spec is incomplete and won't handle...but I'm told, just code it to spec. I recommend changed, but we don't have time for edge cases. I point out potential problems, but we're unlikely to get any of those. I warn of potential compatibility problems but we don't care. Are you just trying to be difficult? If there's a problem QA will catch it. The project is overdue already, and by the way here are some new requirements that need to make it in, and we can't change the release date because we already promised the stockholders. Why is your code so complicated, my twelve-year-old kid could write this.

It's not my fault. I code to spec.

Re:I don't know what the complaint is about?

[Anonymous Coward]

The regular expression, if one must be used, doesn't need to be any more complex than:

^[^@]+@[^@]+$

Sending out response emails to an improperly validated address just turned you into an open relay. Spammers can use your server to send spam by embedding their entire message as the email address, trailed by '\x004@.'

Validate your inputs. Always.

Re:And that attitude is the whole problem

[russotto]

The idea that if even someone's name doesn't fit "your" database, then you can just brush them off and have a beer.

We can. Fact is, trying to write a system which can deal with all those 40 assumptions and still do anything useful with names is impossible. Even covering most of them is impractical, if you want programmers to do anything else. It has nothing to do with OCD. The programmers aren't making the rules because of some inner desire for order, but because the requirements of the system require they be made.

Suppose your system is some sort of order-taking system. And one of the things it must do is print your name on a mailing label. How do you handle that if the name doesn't _fit_ on the mailing label? Or if there is no name at all? Or if the mailing label printer doesn't handle the name's character set? Or if the postal service for the countries in question have standards for names which are not met?