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The crazy thing is when customers demand something that inevitably breaks no matter how much we push back, like: -Years must be in two digits since apparently

The crazy thing is when customers demand something that inevitably breaks no matter how much we push back, like: -Years must be in two digits since apparently nothing is built before 2000 -Not require postal codes or the city field for non-USA addresses since "we don't ship there anyway" -Require names be in the format of first initial, last name since "everyone has a first and last name and that's how we keep track of purchases" Things like this is what drives the cost of software up, since eventually we have to rollback changes.

MattGaiser 5y ago
So many of the problems in enterprise software are grafting tech onto a haphazardly developed manual process in this way. They didn't bother collect more than two digits when starting out, so just carry that error forward forever.
- briffle 5y ago
  I wish I could remember where I read it, many, many years ago, but a blog was talking about automating systems in a government entity. They spent much work customizing a workflow, where all requests would go to Judy, and she would decide who to route it to. They spent weeks trying to map it all out, and the logic used, etc. They eventually found out the reason this was hard-coded into their proceses, was 15 years earlier, in the days of paper based forms, Judy had the first laser printer in the building, and it was cheap to print compared to the other printers. It had nothing to do with her main job. So the printer next to her desk would hum, and then Judy would walk it to the person that needed it. Over the years, this just became accepted, and then later, incorporated into workflows/policies, and became Judy's full time job.
  - dmingod666 5y ago
    My god, the staleness and overwhelming apathy of all people involved is just something else..
    - acwan93 5y ago
      I don't know if it's apathy or rather just an inability to fight the system. The DMV is what immediately comes to mind.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - PascLeRasc 5y ago
      Well the issue is that at this time we aren’t in a position to accept new business logic change request proposals. You’re welcome to bring your issue up at the bi-quarterly documentation stakeholders meeting, oh but I’m seeing here that you actually haven’t been trained to attend that meeting. I’ve CC’d your manager to ask why they assigned this work to you, since as we know the human capital utilization policy is to only work on assigned projects.
pixl97 5y ago
Heh, sounds like this list (not sure if this is the orginial) https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... People have exactly one canonical full name. People have exactly one full name which they go by. People have, at this point in time, exactly one canonical full name. People have, at this point in time, one full name which they go by. People have exactly N names, for any value of N. People’s names fit within a certain defined amount of space. People’s names do not change. People’s names change, but only at a certain enumerated set of events. People’s names are written in ASCII. People’s names are written in any single character set. People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points. People’s names are case sensitive. People’s names are case insensitive. People’s names sometimes have prefixes or suffixes, but you can safely ignore those. People’s names do not contain numbers. People’s names are not written in ALL CAPS. People’s names are not written in all lower case letters. People’s names have an order to them. Picking any ordering scheme will automatically result in consistent ordering among all systems, as long as both use the same ordering scheme for the same name. People’s first names and last names are, by necessity, different. People have last names, family names, or anything else which is shared by folks recognized as their relatives. People’s names are globally unique. People’s names are almost globally unique. Alright alright but surely people’s names are diverse enough such that no million people share the same name. My system will never have to deal with names from China. Or Japan. Or Korea. Or Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Russia, Sweden, Botswana, South Africa, Trinidad, Haiti, France, or the Klingon Empire, all of which have “weird” naming schemes in common use. That Klingon Empire thing was a joke, right? Confound your cultural relativism! People in my society, at least, agree on one commonly accepted standard for names. 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.) I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad words contains no people’s names in it. People’s names are assigned at birth. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth. Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth. Five years? You’re kidding me, right? Two different systems containing data about the same person will use the same name for that person. Two different data entry operators, given a person’s name, will by necessity enter bitwise equivalent strings on any single system, if the system is well-designed. People whose names break my system are weird outliers . They should have had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎. People have names.
anoncake 5y ago
> -Require names be in the format of first initial, last name since "everyone has a first and last name and that's how we keep track of purchases" Also there is only one John Doe in the world, and he sometimes goes by Jeffries or Jane.

MattGaiser 5y ago

So many of the problems in enterprise software are grafting tech onto a haphazardly developed manual process in this way. They didn't bother collect more than two digits when starting out, so just carry that error forward forever.

briffle 5y ago
I wish I could remember where I read it, many, many years ago, but a blog was talking about automating systems in a government entity. They spent much work customizing a workflow, where all requests would go to Judy, and she would decide who to route it to. They spent weeks trying to map it all out, and the logic used, etc. They eventually found out the reason this was hard-coded into their proceses, was 15 years earlier, in the days of paper based forms, Judy had the first laser printer in the building, and it was cheap to print compared to the other printers. It had nothing to do with her main job. So the printer next to her desk would hum, and then Judy would walk it to the person that needed it. Over the years, this just became accepted, and then later, incorporated into workflows/policies, and became Judy's full time job.
- dmingod666 5y ago
  My god, the staleness and overwhelming apathy of all people involved is just something else..
  - acwan93 5y ago
    I don't know if it's apathy or rather just an inability to fight the system. The DMV is what immediately comes to mind.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - PascLeRasc 5y ago
    Well the issue is that at this time we aren’t in a position to accept new business logic change request proposals. You’re welcome to bring your issue up at the bi-quarterly documentation stakeholders meeting, oh but I’m seeing here that you actually haven’t been trained to attend that meeting. I’ve CC’d your manager to ask why they assigned this work to you, since as we know the human capital utilization policy is to only work on assigned projects.

pixl97 5y ago

Heh, sounds like this list (not sure if this is the orginial) https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... People have exactly one canonical full name. People have exactly one full name which they go by. People have, at this point in time, exactly one canonical full name. People have, at this point in time, one full name which they go by. People have exactly N names, for any value of N. People’s names fit within a certain defined amount of space. People’s names do not change. People’s names change, but only at a certain enumerated set of events. People’s names are written in ASCII. People’s names are written in any single character set. People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points. People’s names are case sensitive. People’s names are case insensitive. People’s names sometimes have prefixes or suffixes, but you can safely ignore those. People’s names do not contain numbers. People’s names are not written in ALL CAPS. People’s names are not written in all lower case letters. People’s names have an order to them. Picking any ordering scheme will automatically result in consistent ordering among all systems, as long as both use the same ordering scheme for the same name. People’s first names and last names are, by necessity, different. People have last names, family names, or anything else which is shared by folks recognized as their relatives. People’s names are globally unique. People’s names are almost globally unique. Alright alright but surely people’s names are diverse enough such that no million people share the same name. My system will never have to deal with names from China. Or Japan. Or Korea. Or Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Russia, Sweden, Botswana, South Africa, Trinidad, Haiti, France, or the Klingon Empire, all of which have “weird” naming schemes in common use. That Klingon Empire thing was a joke, right? Confound your cultural relativism! People in my society, at least, agree on one commonly accepted standard for names. 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.) I can safely assume that this dictionary of bad words contains no people’s names in it. People’s names are assigned at birth. OK, maybe not at birth, but at least pretty close to birth. Alright, alright, within a year or so of birth. Five years? You’re kidding me, right? Two different systems containing data about the same person will use the same name for that person. Two different data entry operators, given a person’s name, will by necessity enter bitwise equivalent strings on any single system, if the system is well-designed. People whose names break my system are weird outliers . They should have had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎. People have names.

anoncake 5y ago

> -Require names be in the format of first initial, last name since "everyone has a first and last name and that's how we keep track of purchases" Also there is only one John Doe in the world, and he sometimes goes by Jeffries or Jane.