I'm a programmer, and this reminds me of one time when I got a support call about a bug in our app: a "State" picklist with 509 entries (for you non-United Statesians, this is a bit more than the 50 or so states - we sometimes include shit like DC, Puerto Rico and Guam in these lists - I should have been seeing), including about 20 different versions of "Louisiana" (like Lousiana, Louisiania etc.) and lots of different countries (occasionally spelled correctly). What had happened was that we originally had a table in the database for listing all the states, and one of our coders got the assignment to add a marriage license module to the app, mirroring the state's paper form that was used for this. Since the "State" line had to accommodate people from other countries, the clerks just used this line to enter whatever country they were from and insisted on the same functionality in the app. Since our database was fully relational, this coder just used the existing "States" table but added new entries in code whenever a user typed out a non-standard thing in the box. Completely hosing every place in the app that used a States picklist.
The real mystery was how this table grew to 509 entries before anyone noticed a problem.
I came across a country list to choose your international telephone prefix. No option to type the number, gotta use the drop down list. It also included many '+1's for American states.
There was a Chinese version of the web page, and all the country codes (UK, CA, etc) were translated as if whatever abbreviation you might guess. Highlights, IIRC, included BP -> (Chinese translation for) British Petroleum; IN -> (Chinese for) the word 'in'; and SS -> (Chinese for) the Schutzstaffel.
509 "states?" Chances that could include political subdivisions of many more countries.
It included whatever the clerks felt like typing into that part of the form. There were even a couple of people's names in there.
I'm a programmer, and this reminds me of one time when I got a support call about a bug in our app: a "State" picklist with 509 entries (for you non-United Statesians, this is a bit more than the 50 or so states - we sometimes include shit like DC, Puerto Rico and Guam in these lists - I should have been seeing), including about 20 different versions of "Louisiana" (like Lousiana, Louisiania etc.) and lots of different countries (occasionally spelled correctly). What had happened was that we originally had a table in the database for listing all the states, and one of our coders got the assignment to add a marriage license module to the app, mirroring the state's paper form that was used for this. Since the "State" line had to accommodate people from other countries, the clerks just used this line to enter whatever country they were from and insisted on the same functionality in the app. Since our database was fully relational, this coder just used the existing "States" table but added new entries in code whenever a user typed out a non-standard thing in the box. Completely hosing every place in the app that used a States picklist.
The real mystery was how this table grew to 509 entries before anyone noticed a problem.
I came across a country list to choose your international telephone prefix. No option to type the number, gotta use the drop down list. It also included many '+1's for American states.
There was a Chinese version of the web page, and all the country codes (UK, CA, etc) were translated as if whatever abbreviation you might guess. Highlights, IIRC, included BP -> (Chinese translation for) British Petroleum; IN -> (Chinese for) the word 'in'; and SS -> (Chinese for) the Schutzstaffel.
509 "states?" Chances that could include political subdivisions of many more countries.
It included whatever the clerks felt like typing into that part of the form. There were even a couple of people's names in there.