3 ms·

This is the sort of thing (a town with no street names, only numbers) that would have been a big problem 20 years ago, but not an issue at all today. Back in t

This is the sort of thing (a town with no street names, only numbers) that would have been a big problem 20 years ago, but not an issue at all today. Back in the days when people would use paper maps to navigate, you'd never find house number 17 unless you actually called the guy and he told you to turn left at the pharmacy. Today, your satnav will know where the place is and will stop you right in front if it, regardless of whether #'s 16 and 18 are half a mile away. So there will have been a small window of time between when the town expanded enough to have a few wacky outlier house numbers that nobody could find, and when Google Maps fixed everything. Today, they may as well just leave things the way they are.

phamilton 8y ago
I'm guessing you've never lived somewhere with a proper grid system. I know exactly where 680 E 100 N is. It's on the street one block north of Center Street and is between 6 and 7 blocks east of Main Street. Grids work really well. EDIT: Reading the article before commenting is a good idea, my bad. Interesting how they don't even have numbered streets. Article aside, grids are great.
0ld 8y ago
It doesn't work like that in real life. My house is 2 years old and still missing from the google maps. If you try to search gmaps for my address, it will guide you to a house on the street with the same name in the neighbouring town.
mrweasel 8y ago
It's honestly worse today. There's a ton of IT systems that will not accept an address with no street name. I worked on the address validation for a webshop. We wanted as much flexibility in the addresses as possible, but the backend system had some required fields. We settled on "at least three characters in the street name. A little while later we got a call from a customer in Mannheim, who would like to order, but his "street name" was reject. Why? Because Mannheim is a city of squares (at least in the old part). Ideally any address input field would just be a text field, where the user can enter as much or as little information as is required.
PurpleRamen 8y ago
I don't see that. Numbers are just another type of name. As long as there are signs or a map, anyone with decent navigation-skill will find their target. I have never used a satnav in my whole life, still found everything without problems yet; often even without a map. Living in a country with signs is the secret to succedd there.
dwighttk 8y ago
"Back in the days when people would use paper maps to navigate, you'd never find house number 17" What? Did you see the picture of the paper map of the village in the article? You just go to the building marked 17 on the map. Maybe you'd need to ask someone to get yourself oriented, but you could also use the house numbers for the houses you can see to orient yourself just fine.

phamilton 8y ago

I'm guessing you've never lived somewhere with a proper grid system. I know exactly where 680 E 100 N is. It's on the street one block north of Center Street and is between 6 and 7 blocks east of Main Street. Grids work really well. EDIT: Reading the article before commenting is a good idea, my bad. Interesting how they don't even have numbered streets. Article aside, grids are great.

0ld 8y ago

It doesn't work like that in real life. My house is 2 years old and still missing from the google maps. If you try to search gmaps for my address, it will guide you to a house on the street with the same name in the neighbouring town.

mrweasel 8y ago

It's honestly worse today. There's a ton of IT systems that will not accept an address with no street name. I worked on the address validation for a webshop. We wanted as much flexibility in the addresses as possible, but the backend system had some required fields. We settled on "at least three characters in the street name. A little while later we got a call from a customer in Mannheim, who would like to order, but his "street name" was reject. Why? Because Mannheim is a city of squares (at least in the old part). Ideally any address input field would just be a text field, where the user can enter as much or as little information as is required.

PurpleRamen 8y ago

I don't see that. Numbers are just another type of name. As long as there are signs or a map, anyone with decent navigation-skill will find their target. I have never used a satnav in my whole life, still found everything without problems yet; often even without a map. Living in a country with signs is the secret to succedd there.

dwighttk 8y ago

"Back in the days when people would use paper maps to navigate, you'd never find house number 17" What? Did you see the picture of the paper map of the village in the article? You just go to the building marked 17 on the map. Maybe you'd need to ask someone to get yourself oriented, but you could also use the house numbers for the houses you can see to orient yourself just fine.