List of falsehoods programmers believe in

https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

by edward • 9 years ago

255 117 9 years ago

github.com

Cyphase• 9 years ago

I assume OP didn't mean to link to the #postal-addresses anchor?

oxguy3• 9 years ago

Yeah, could a moderator please remove that?

sctb• 9 years ago

Done.

pavel_lishin2• 9 years ago

One interesting question from http://haacked.com/archive/2007/08/21/i-knew-how-to-validate...: is “Fred Bloggs”@example.com actually a valid email address, given that the plain ascii double-quotes seem to have been converted to "fancy" ones by the blogging software?

jcranmer3• 9 years ago

It is a legal email address per RFC 5321.

In practice such email addresses are not possible in many server configurations, and it usually makes sense to reject such email addresses.

dsr_• 9 years ago

...assuming that you are being asked to create it. If you want to deliver to another server, keep the left-hand-side exactly the way it is.

Bartweiss7• 9 years ago

How is it legal per RFC 5321? The quotation marks are notionally valid, yes, but as posted it had the ASCII double-quote (legal) converted to stylized left and right quotes (non-ASCII, illegal).

wyldfire• 9 years ago

In practice such email addresses are not possible in many server configurations, and it usually makes sense to reject such email addresses.

I would put more weight on closing the loop than filtering on the front end. I'd wager that the vast majority of sites that gather an email address do not send a verification email that bars further progress on their site. It's especially critical if it becomes the underlying trust mechanism for your site.

IMO you should only work on filtering fancy quotes out if you've already got a loop-closing verification email path. And yes, I recognize that it's really nice to catch these errors earlier. But the failure mode where people enter someone else's valid email address rather than their own is more common than you might assume.

jwilk• 9 years ago

Per RFC 5321 (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), e-mail addresses are ASCII-only.

Per RFC 6531 (SMTP Extension for Internationalized Email), this is not a valid address either.

komali22• 9 years ago

Time passes at the same speed on top of a mountain and at the bottom of a valley

Woah, what? Like, they're talking about effects of relativity because someone is traveling "faster" as the earth spins at the top of a mountain?

nkrisc• 9 years ago

Yep. And it's measurable, it's just very, very small. It normally doesn't really matter for all but the most sensitive applications.

AckSyn2• 9 years ago

Time dilation of everyday life is so small that it's not detectable to all but atomic clocks, over the course of your entire life. So the differences between 10 miles is so negligible it doesn't even exist as an issue.

komali22• 9 years ago

Why would it be relevant, then, for a programmer to know that?

ska4• 9 years ago

It doesn't practically exist as a problem for things (like people) for whom a meaningful time scale is around a second, and a lifetime 100yrs.

If you are operating on very small time scales, or if you're going to be around a long time, it can matter a lot.

Piskvorrr6• 9 years ago

Good luck with your GPS navigation then. "You are here. (Give or take 10 miles, no biggie, eh?)" There is a surprising number of applications in your everyday life for which Newtonian physics are not precise enough.

quickcomment• 9 years ago

Also, you have to account for the different gravitational field in both situations, which affects time flow.

xenophonf• 9 years ago

You are going to love this:

http://www.leapsecond.com/great2005/

The short version is that this guy hauled three cesium atomic clocks up a mountain while on vacation with his kids. They returned 23 ns older then the guy's wife (who stayed home to study for her nursing board exams).

Note that time dilation isn't just caused by motion (special relativity), but also by proximity to a gravity well (general relativity).

vorpalhex• 9 years ago

There's a danger in mixing technical spec information (a phone number can contain non-numeric characters) and non-technical spec information (women...). Some falsehoods are provably correct/incorrect, statements about people don't fit into that mold.

zubat• 9 years ago

All the falsehoods texts discuss the same kind of issue: the domain doesn't match the model. And computer models are imperfect a priori for modelling empirical data(natural language, human identity, relationships, continuous functions, physics calculations). We can get those closer in approximate so that the error is negligible, by testing, collecting feedback about our error, and iterating on the model. All of these - even the genders and natural language - can be tested for error, we just can't ensure 100%, and our measurements for the human things necessarily rest on sampling opinion.

Piskvorrr6• 9 years ago

Well, it is rather unfortunate that our data models need to deal with people. Without them, all those irregularities and impurities are eliminated. [lightbulb-animation-above-robot-head]

andrewstuart2• 9 years ago

If we really aspire to be an information-driven culture who makes informed decisions about important topics, we really ought to curate lists like these down to actual informed discussions on the items in the list.

Printing out a list of "falsehoods" littered with personal opinions and calling them "demonstrable" [1] without a shred of evidence is not going to contribute to general knowledge. There may be some utility in getting me thinking, but for the most part I just find it self-aggrandizing. For what it's worth, I do find this [2] format much more helpful. I'd very much rather see valid counterexamples proving a sweeping statement false than yet another sweeping statement that happens to cover a few sweeping statements.

Of course, the above is my personal opinion and may not be shared by the rest of the community, but please can we do better than curating a list of lists we agree with?

[1] https://chiselapp.com/user/ttmrichter/repository/gng/doc/tru...

[2] https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...

spacehacker• 9 years ago

https://kevin.deldycke.com/2016/12/falsehoods-programmers-be...

Semiapies• 9 years ago

And you illustrate the smug unhelpfulness of the falsehood lists at their worst.

Bartweiss7• 9 years ago

Similarly, the famous list of falsehoods about names: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

Even aside from the politicized content, I found it jarring that this bounced between clear and 'demonstrable' statements and entries like "you do not need a postal address", which was just a Twitter link to some letter delivered without one. It's not how I'd prefer to see this stuff curated, either.

nostrebored3• 9 years ago

Postal addressing is actually a very interesting topic; that statement is demonstrable. Many smaller towns internationally do not require an address line; all letters to the city are delivered to a central hub and distributed based on name/other information.

chris_7• 9 years ago

There exists an algorithm which transforms names and can be reversed losslessly. (Yes, yes, you can do it if your algorithm returns the input. You get a gold star.)

What am I missing here? Any lossless compression algorithm works, even "string.reverse" would apply.

benchaney2• 9 years ago

Not only that, but a fair number of them are actually true statements (e.g. People have names). I can only assume someone got overzealous trying to prevent assumptions about other cultures, but I still don't really understand the train of though that lead to their inclusion.

stevula• 9 years ago

It is fairly common for newborn babies not to have names, which can cause issues with medical record systems. In most cases a workaround is used, such as "Baby {{Lastname}}". In the US, I suppose, the baby would at least have a last name, so not entirely nameless.

EvilTerran• 9 years ago

I suppose that could be referring to "John/Jane Doe" situations - when someone turns up who may have a name, but you have no way of ascertaining it (because they're not carrying ID, and are unresponsive, dead, or otherwise unable to tell you themselves). Not really a relevant concern for most programming situations, but it could catch you out if you're writing software for medical/police reports, for instance.

Or, for a rarer subcase where the person genuinely has no name at all - consider "feral children": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

m3rc• 9 years ago

The assumption you've just made is exactly why the list of falsehoods needs to exist.

darfs• 9 years ago

Artist-Names are possible. In germany, atleast, you can carry it on your Passport with ur real Name.

kdeldycke2• 9 years ago

That's one of my concerns too.

We're currently in Phase 1 of the project. Which is all about collecting, in the wild, instances of this trending writing style.

Now if it get traction and grows out of a gimmick, and if Falsehoods articles become a new literary form in its own right, then maybe we'll have enough resources in the community to start Phase 2. Which might see more curation happens, as well as writing guidelines and add more structure.

bshlgrs• 9 years ago

This list is an awkward mix of posts containing easily-verifiable but surprising claims about various technical specifications, and posts which just make a variety of contentious claims with no particular evidence provided (I think the economics one is possibly the worst).

masterleep• 9 years ago

The ideological ones are really horrible.

Falling3• 9 years ago

Which ones are ideological?

nostrebored3• 9 years ago

Falsehoods programmers believe about gender is a pretty great example.

firepoet• 9 years ago

A great example of what? From what I read in there, each of those falsehoods is verifiable. Which one(s) (is/are)n't?

_qwfv• 9 years ago

It's a pretty great example of falsehoods programmers believe.

camus2• 9 years ago

There is some obvious "activism" behind such list, mixing valid technical specifications, politics, opinions and gender theory. But I guess it is a political correctness guide for people who believe in a specific political line, also a way to shame publicly those who do not by using that list as an argument of authority.

SilasX• 9 years ago

You're downvoted, but I agree that the e.g. women-in-tech one -- while worthwhile to be aware of -- does not fit the general "falsehoods programmers believe" theme/meme. The meme refers to assumptions that lead to technically-inaccurate programs.

IOW, there's a difference between "everyone has two names, so you can assume that schema for a database" vs "all women in tech are designers". The latter is false, but it's not a programming error. The stuff on this list [1] does not fit the pattern of programming errors.

https://gist.github.com/Su-Shee/5d1a417fa9de19c15477

MatekCopatek• 9 years ago

You seem to imply that there is a non-political, non-activistic way of doing it. How would that work?

Because from where I'm standing, if you e.g. implement gender as binary, you're not being more objective, you're just supporting the opposite side of the people you perceive as activistic.

nostrebored3• 9 years ago

Which is exactly the point: it's not a falsehood it's a contention. Listing your political beliefs as truisms without explanation isn't just lazy, it's annoying.

song3• 9 years ago

Was reading the post about names... My girlfriend has a family name with two letters. In Asia, it's common enough so it's not an issue but in Europe there are some systems that refuse my girlfriend's name because it's too short.

It's kind of frustrating.

autoreleasepool• 9 years ago

Interesting. I'm curious, what's her usual workaround for this problem?

song3• 9 years ago

Her first name has two parts, so she just combines the first part of her first name with her last name. It's incorrect but still matches more or less what she has on her password.

cholantesh• 9 years ago

I remember hearing from a classmate of mine in college that 'O' is a legitimate Korean surname. Blew my mind! And what about people without a surname? Mononyms are common in some parts of the world, like my native state in South India.

patmcguire• 9 years ago

"tax - A PHP 5.4+ tax management library"

What?

jefe_• 9 years ago

was trying to figure this one out as well, best i could come up with is that the library is a bit ambitious (reliably meeting tax requirements for many countries).

kdeldycke2• 9 years ago

Libraries trying to solve these falsehoods are considered good candidates for inclusion in that list: https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood#libraries

koolba3• 9 years ago

Under "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About "Women In Tech"":

We're only in tech to find a husband, boyfriend or generally to get laid.

If you flip the genders around I'm pretty sure that would be true for quite a few men (at least the last part).

nostoc• 9 years ago

You think men go in tech to get laid?

koolba3• 9 years ago

Of course. You don't?

Maybe not directly (i.e. literal rock star) but as a means to an end sure.

clickbait2• 9 years ago

Flipping the genders around doesn't make it any less sexist.

koolba3• 9 years ago

It doesn't make it any more sexist either.

stinos• 9 years ago

Most of these things are more about 'not knowing' ot 'forgetting to take into account' than 'not believing'? (not a native English speaker but surely those are not the same semantically right?)

abraves100012• 9 years ago

Yea, as discussed in other parts the idea that programmers believe "People's names do not change" is demonstrably false. I am a programmer, I understand names change but you are right, there is a chance I don't account for it.

Semantically believing something is false != I didn't take it into account.

laurentdc• 9 years ago

The shortest path between two points is a straight line

uh?

abraves100012• 9 years ago

Right?! Even on maps it is true.

It doesn't mean that there is a viable route on that line or that that line is the preferred one.

That one is really bad, imo

maxerickson• 9 years ago

It's only true on certain maps.

https://courseware.e-education.psu.edu/projection/chapter9.h...

For regional maps it doesn't particularly matter, the map will be in a projection that has relatively minimal error, but a straight line in most projected coordinate systems will not be the shortest path between those points.

jcranmer3• 9 years ago

Depends on the map projection.

On the surface of a sphere, the shortest distance between two points is along a great circle route (which is the equivalent of a line in spherical geometry). Polar map projections preserve straight lines as great circle routes, but, e.g., Mercator projections do not.

If you're looking at a 5 km × 5 km topo map, the difference isn't particularly significant. If you're looking at a map of Europe or the United States, it is (note that many airline routes seem to follow curved lines--it's because the shortest distance is that curved line).

ska4• 9 years ago

   Even on maps it is true.

That really depends on your map. Or rather, your projection. Which is sort of the point.

Swizec• 9 years ago

Triangle with 3 right angles. Geometry is weird.

https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-draw-a-triangle-with-three-9...

Also, taxicab geometry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry

vurpo• 9 years ago

Depends on your situation. In non-Euclidean geometry (such as on the surface of a sphere, which the Earth approximately is), it's not as simple as taking a straight line between two lines.

Also look at Manhattan/taxicab geometry. When you can only move along one axis at a time, you usually can't move in a straight line between two points.

Both of these situations have common applications in the real world. For example, in mapping and navigation.

DashRattlesnake2• 9 years ago

When it comes to "curated" list like this, the who the curator is more important that what they curate. Who is Kevin Deldycke, and why should I value his judgement?

ZenoArrow• 9 years ago

"Falsehoods Programmers Believe - A brief list of common falsehoods. A great overview and quick introduction into the world of falsehoods."

https://spaceninja.com/2015/12/08/falsehoods-programmers-bel...

"Falsehoods programmers believe about names" "People have names"

Is this a joke?

Verdex_2• 9 years ago

Newborn baby, unidentified deceased person, person in police custody who refuse to give name, feral children.

elcapitan2• 9 years ago

Ok, that list is awful, with all the ideological nonsense.

But besides that, for stuff that is actually empirically testable and relevant it would be nice to put them into a unit-testing library to automatically check certain functionality you build (for example to check functions that deal with time or dates or names).

AvenueIngres• 9 years ago

The sociological "falsehoods" of this list ought to be renamed:

"Postulates I choose to consider as universal and objective truths as to silence any discussion or debate around them"

"List of opinions I have that are facts by virtue of being on this list"

Of course, you're wrong for disagreeing with OP.

Nomentatus• 9 years ago

The lists are cautionary tales, things to consider before you code. "May those who have never sinned ignore these posters, suggestions, and lists."

elcapitan2• 9 years ago

Ok, but I must be right about something? - "Nope, not if you disagree with me about the other thing"

z3t4• 9 years ago

If we are to remember the truth, it's better to list the truth rather then the falsehoods.

Example: Partner says "Don't buy the red one", then a few days later you go and buy the red one, while you should have bought the blue one. It would be better if your partner had said "Buy the blue one".

Piskvorrr6• 9 years ago

There's the rub: if trying to implement, e.g., the whole Names thing, you'll find that the requirements are impossible to satisfy - if you avoid the Scylla of one, the Charybdis of another will get you. The point is to be aware of the limitations, and know which ones you are accomodating, which you are avoiding, which you are breaking, and why. The other option is akin to "MEH EVERYTHING IS UPPERCASE ASCII CHARACTER OR A SPACE NOTHING ELSE MATTERS", which sounds a bit...backward...in 2017, and will come back to bite you.

waynecolvin• 9 years ago

Wait a moment, they have a Falsehoods series on all sorts of subjects. The Fake News fact checkers are going to try globbing on to every niche they can...

List of falsehoods programmers believe in

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