Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names

canpolat@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 64 points –
kalzumeus.com
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It's all reasonable stuff except maybe:

People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points.

I don't see how you could avoid this this in software that needs to ask the user their name.

I think it's definitely a good idea to avoid using names wherever possible, and definitely don't try to do anything clever with them.

When necessary, software can just be clear:

  • "in unicode, what should I call you?"
  • "in unicode, who is making this credit card transaction?'

Users: "I don't speak unicode"

Haha, yeah, I didn't mean literally telling them that. More like giving them a text field that can only contain unicode characters, which is pretty standard.

You can do that when you control the frontend UI. Then, you can set up the input field for their name, applying input validation.

But I would rather not rely on telling the user, in hopes they understand and comply. If they have ways to do it wrong, they will.