4 ms·

Serious question, what is the purpose of sorting names? I presume you never give your customers a list of other customers, so such a sort couldn't be useful to

Serious question, what is the purpose of sorting names? I presume you never give your customers a list of other customers, so such a sort couldn't be useful to them. Is it for internal reports or something? Some MBA says "get me a list of all our customers... and make sure it's sorted!" ? And is some arbitrary imperfect sorting order not adequate for this sorting need? Why not just treat the name field as a bunch of bytes and sort it with no special consideration given to the quirks of names?

astura 6y ago
One stupid example off the top of my head: A teacher that needs a list of all the students scheduled to be in their 5:00 class. There's literally millions of similar examples. Software where none of the users know about the other users would be fairly rare in my world (I've worked on internal business tools most of my career).
- liability 6y ago
  Is any arbitrary imperfect sort not adaquate for roll call? If the full names are sorted naively like any other string, why would that be a problem for teachers? I don't get this. Usually what happens is last names are placed first for sorted lists, but this seems like an arbitrary meaningless convention without real utility. And since this arbitrary convention is problematic in cases where names can take on many forms, it makes sense to disregard the convention. If you're not already accustomed to the convention it doesn't even make rational sense; why should the first name be last and the last name first? That's totally backwards, but it's convention. Why though? It's not even like that ordering will necessarily put siblings next to each other on the sorted list. Many siblings have different last names and many people who aren't siblings have the same last name, so what is the actual purpose of supporting this convention? My name is such a convention-defying name by the way, the way I use it. Often I have to enter "[first initial] [middle name]" as my ''first name'' even though it isn't. Just give me a single name field please. Edit: Annoying example from a minute ago: I gave my first initial/middle name to newegg. Newegg tried to be clever by dropping my middle name and now calls me simply "J." That's not my name!

astura 6y ago

One stupid example off the top of my head: A teacher that needs a list of all the students scheduled to be in their 5:00 class. There's literally millions of similar examples. Software where none of the users know about the other users would be fairly rare in my world (I've worked on internal business tools most of my career).

liability 6y ago
Is any arbitrary imperfect sort not adaquate for roll call? If the full names are sorted naively like any other string, why would that be a problem for teachers? I don't get this. Usually what happens is last names are placed first for sorted lists, but this seems like an arbitrary meaningless convention without real utility. And since this arbitrary convention is problematic in cases where names can take on many forms, it makes sense to disregard the convention. If you're not already accustomed to the convention it doesn't even make rational sense; why should the first name be last and the last name first? That's totally backwards, but it's convention. Why though? It's not even like that ordering will necessarily put siblings next to each other on the sorted list. Many siblings have different last names and many people who aren't siblings have the same last name, so what is the actual purpose of supporting this convention? My name is such a convention-defying name by the way, the way I use it. Often I have to enter "[first initial] [middle name]" as my ''first name'' even though it isn't. Just give me a single name field please. Edit: Annoying example from a minute ago: I gave my first initial/middle name to newegg. Newegg tried to be clever by dropping my middle name and now calls me simply "J." That's not my name!