6 ms·

The absurdity of not being able to support a name as common as Christopher or anything as long or longer just screams "government work". What the hell went thro

by jjice 5y ago

The absurdity of not being able to support a name as common as Christopher or anything as long or longer just screams "government work". What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? Absolutely no testing or real data was used either, but that shouldn't matter, because having a max limit on someone's (very common) name is honestly impressive. The fact they developed this system without addressing this issue is a testament to the quality of government software development. I'm sure there is good government software out there, but there are plenty of showcases of the opposite (especially since these are systems that NEED to work).

Uehreka 5y ago
CVS also has trouble with my name (I’m also a Christopher) as do some other private entities like my doctor’s office. So this may not be entirely a government thing.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  You can go to a new doctor or pharmacy. The consequences for them not having your full first name recorded are between minimal and nonexistant. To be a US resident, you must be known to the government. To leave, the government will tax a percentage of your wealth. Try to tell the government to pound sand while remaining, and they can bring the full legal weight of their monopoly on force against you. The difference in scale of harm between what CVS is capable of versus the government means we should have no issue with holding government to a much higher standard, And be proactive in pointing out when it falls short.
MonkeyClub 5y ago
> What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? Not sure what did go through, but I'm sure that "Christofer" as a test string didn't.
nikanj 5y ago
> What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? The way to make a profit on government contracts: 1) Underbid 2) Find every possible use case that’s OBVIOUSLY needed, yet not in the specs 3) Leave them unimplemented 4) Charge through the nose for the extra work. The system has already been paid for and put to production. It’s too late for the buyers to back out, lest they be out both money and face
- londons_explore 5y ago
  It backfired this time though... the government was like "we can just live with 10 character first names".
nsxwolf 5y ago
So Christopher is an interesting case because it's the longest common English first name at 11 characters. There are names that seem longer but aren't, like Maximilian. My first son is named Christopher, and we realized right away that there is a 10 character first name limit in a ton of systems almost from day 1 - calling my insurance company, the automated system asked "Are you calling about... Christophe?"... in a French accent, which was hilarious.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
WalterBright 5y ago
Sounds like the media player I just bought that errors out with "too many songs to shuffle". And you're hosed.
WalterBright 5y ago
It was common in the 1980s for compilers to have arbitrary implementation limits. The C Standard even lists minimums, like 127 nesting levels of blocks, 12 pointer declarators, 4095 characters in a string literal, etc. My compiler started out with those, but I quickly realized that there were only two actual limits: 1. allocated memory 2. stack size It turned out to be much less code and many fewer error messages to just detect out of memory and blowing up the stack.
- jjnoakes 5y ago
  In some programs (compilers included), removing the limits and relying on detecting OOM is not a bad design decision. In others (most notably network-facing programs, but there are other categories), it can be quite a big problem to not have limits on inputs.
- kazinator 5y ago
  The C standard has those limits mostly because you cannot meaningfully define conformance without them. Limits will be there whether you standardize minima for them or not. For instance, no C compiler will handle a function with any number of parameters; as you try test cases with more and more parameters, eventually they will all crap out, right? If for no other reason, than memory. So then if you don't have anything in the standard about this (like the ECMAScript standard doesn't, for instance) you have to conclude that all those compilers are nonconforming. But if you have it in the standard that a conforming implementation must handle functions with 128 parameters, then those implementations which crap out at over 128 are spared from being declared nonconforming. Only those which crap out at 128 parameters or fewer have a conformance issue. Limits settle questions. The user reads the spec and then has confidence they can have 4095 characters in a literal which will be portable to anything calling itself conforming. The implementor reads the spec and then has confidence that their implementation doesn't have to handle more than 4095 characters in a literal in order to handle maximally portable programs. There are goalposts firmly in the ground. It can be useful for an implementation to optionally diagnose when a minimum limit is exceeded, even if it allows for much more. For instance, to tell the user they are using a larger character literal than 4095. This helps the user prepare a portable program that will work in other implementations.
Johnny555 5y ago
What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? That decision probably dates back decades and was based on the limited amount of space on a 80 column punch card. And as the system evolved past punch cards, no one bothered to update the spec because "it's always been 10 characters, if we change it now, something might break"
mikewarot 5y ago
>What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? They thought that the next computer system would be better, and when they re-wrote it for the new machine, they'd be able to fix the problems they found, in about 3 years or so. They certainly didn't expect it to still be running in the 1970s or 1980s, let alone in 2021. IBM broke everything when they introduced backwards compatibility. It saved a ton of time, in the short term, but everything before that point was frozen, and the technical debt it caused has never been paid.
Vvector 5y ago
Wait until you find out about Y2K
- marcodave 5y ago
  Wait until we start to reach 2038, it's going to be either awesome or an epic shitshow
icedchai 5y ago
This likely happened due to budgetary constraints. Storage space was much more expensive then. 10 extra bytes x 10 million records is 100 megabytes of hard drive space. That's a few thousand dollars in 80's money, just for storage. That doesn't include redundant drives, backups, extra RAM, and whatever else is needed. The limits have probably been in place for 40+ years and nobody wants change it. Or maybe nobody knows how. It's much easier to tell them to abbreviate their name as "Chris" and move on.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Normally I don't recommend rewriting code, but maintaining such a system is probably more difficult in this case.
h0l0cube 5y ago
> just screams "government work" Or the government not having enough funds to upgrade its systems since the 80s when storage space came at a significant premium (or not making modernizing IT systems a policy/budgetary priority)
- wolverine876 5y ago
  ... because the same people who scream 'government work' also vote to cut taxes.
  - h0l0cube 5y ago
    Yeah, "... but see how incompetent they are?!!1! Why give them more money?!!1!" Not to say that throwing money at government solves problems either. A competent administration is needed also to instil confidence in voters that they are actually committed to solving problems. Not sure what the situation is like in NJ
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      The solution is to support and elect good people. If you don't maintain your house, your house will leak and corrode - no matter who else you blame or what excuses you make.
      - h0l0cube 5y ago
        I agree, but I guess it's hard if there's no good options up for election.. or if they promise one thing and do another. Its particularly the case with winner-takes-all democratic systems. I think representational democracies do better at reflecting the desires of voters, otherwise it's just the incumbent pandering to swing voters
        wolverine876 5y ago
        To be completely frank, I hear this from many people and I think they are excuses. I see plenty of successes, including where I live. It's not at all perfect, but a lot can get done. The biggest obstacle is the people standing on the side saying nothing can be done - while other people are doing the work.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wolverine876 5y ago
> screams "government work" The 'government work' was probably done by a private contractor. Note that the OP is about a private bank. If you haven't seen results like that in private business, you've lived a charmed life!

by jjice 5y ago

Uehreka 5y ago

CVS also has trouble with my name (I’m also a Christopher) as do some other private entities like my doctor’s office. So this may not be entirely a government thing.

zdragnar 5y ago
You can go to a new doctor or pharmacy. The consequences for them not having your full first name recorded are between minimal and nonexistant. To be a US resident, you must be known to the government. To leave, the government will tax a percentage of your wealth. Try to tell the government to pound sand while remaining, and they can bring the full legal weight of their monopoly on force against you. The difference in scale of harm between what CVS is capable of versus the government means we should have no issue with holding government to a much higher standard, And be proactive in pointing out when it falls short.

MonkeyClub 5y ago

> What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? Not sure what did go through, but I'm sure that "Christofer" as a test string didn't.

nikanj 5y ago

> What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? The way to make a profit on government contracts: 1) Underbid 2) Find every possible use case that’s OBVIOUSLY needed, yet not in the specs 3) Leave them unimplemented 4) Charge through the nose for the extra work. The system has already been paid for and put to production. It’s too late for the buyers to back out, lest they be out both money and face

londons_explore 5y ago
It backfired this time though... the government was like "we can just live with 10 character first names".

nsxwolf 5y ago

So Christopher is an interesting case because it's the longest common English first name at 11 characters. There are names that seem longer but aren't, like Maximilian. My first son is named Christopher, and we realized right away that there is a 10 character first name limit in a ton of systems almost from day 1 - calling my insurance company, the automated system asked "Are you calling about... Christophe?"... in a French accent, which was hilarious.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

WalterBright 5y ago

Sounds like the media player I just bought that errors out with "too many songs to shuffle". And you're hosed.

WalterBright 5y ago

It was common in the 1980s for compilers to have arbitrary implementation limits. The C Standard even lists minimums, like 127 nesting levels of blocks, 12 pointer declarators, 4095 characters in a string literal, etc. My compiler started out with those, but I quickly realized that there were only two actual limits: 1. allocated memory 2. stack size It turned out to be much less code and many fewer error messages to just detect out of memory and blowing up the stack.

jjnoakes 5y ago
In some programs (compilers included), removing the limits and relying on detecting OOM is not a bad design decision. In others (most notably network-facing programs, but there are other categories), it can be quite a big problem to not have limits on inputs.
kazinator 5y ago
The C standard has those limits mostly because you cannot meaningfully define conformance without them. Limits will be there whether you standardize minima for them or not. For instance, no C compiler will handle a function with any number of parameters; as you try test cases with more and more parameters, eventually they will all crap out, right? If for no other reason, than memory. So then if you don't have anything in the standard about this (like the ECMAScript standard doesn't, for instance) you have to conclude that all those compilers are nonconforming. But if you have it in the standard that a conforming implementation must handle functions with 128 parameters, then those implementations which crap out at over 128 are spared from being declared nonconforming. Only those which crap out at 128 parameters or fewer have a conformance issue. Limits settle questions. The user reads the spec and then has confidence they can have 4095 characters in a literal which will be portable to anything calling itself conforming. The implementor reads the spec and then has confidence that their implementation doesn't have to handle more than 4095 characters in a literal in order to handle maximally portable programs. There are goalposts firmly in the ground. It can be useful for an implementation to optionally diagnose when a minimum limit is exceeded, even if it allows for much more. For instance, to tell the user they are using a larger character literal than 4095. This helps the user prepare a portable program that will work in other implementations.

Johnny555 5y ago

What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? That decision probably dates back decades and was based on the limited amount of space on a 80 column punch card. And as the system evolved past punch cards, no one bothered to update the spec because "it's always been 10 characters, if we change it now, something might break"

mikewarot 5y ago

>What the hell went through everyone's head when they built this system? They thought that the next computer system would be better, and when they re-wrote it for the new machine, they'd be able to fix the problems they found, in about 3 years or so. They certainly didn't expect it to still be running in the 1970s or 1980s, let alone in 2021. IBM broke everything when they introduced backwards compatibility. It saved a ton of time, in the short term, but everything before that point was frozen, and the technical debt it caused has never been paid.

Vvector 5y ago

Wait until you find out about Y2K

marcodave 5y ago
Wait until we start to reach 2038, it's going to be either awesome or an epic shitshow

icedchai 5y ago

This likely happened due to budgetary constraints. Storage space was much more expensive then. 10 extra bytes x 10 million records is 100 megabytes of hard drive space. That's a few thousand dollars in 80's money, just for storage. That doesn't include redundant drives, backups, extra RAM, and whatever else is needed. The limits have probably been in place for 40+ years and nobody wants change it. Or maybe nobody knows how. It's much easier to tell them to abbreviate their name as "Chris" and move on.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Normally I don't recommend rewriting code, but maintaining such a system is probably more difficult in this case.

h0l0cube 5y ago

> just screams "government work" Or the government not having enough funds to upgrade its systems since the 80s when storage space came at a significant premium (or not making modernizing IT systems a policy/budgetary priority)

wolverine876 5y ago
... because the same people who scream 'government work' also vote to cut taxes.
- h0l0cube 5y ago
  Yeah, "... but see how incompetent they are?!!1! Why give them more money?!!1!" Not to say that throwing money at government solves problems either. A competent administration is needed also to instil confidence in voters that they are actually committed to solving problems. Not sure what the situation is like in NJ
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    The solution is to support and elect good people. If you don't maintain your house, your house will leak and corrode - no matter who else you blame or what excuses you make.
    - h0l0cube 5y ago
      I agree, but I guess it's hard if there's no good options up for election.. or if they promise one thing and do another. Its particularly the case with winner-takes-all democratic systems. I think representational democracies do better at reflecting the desires of voters, otherwise it's just the incumbent pandering to swing voters
      - wolverine876 5y ago
        To be completely frank, I hear this from many people and I think they are excuses. I see plenty of successes, including where I live. It's not at all perfect, but a lot can get done. The biggest obstacle is the people standing on the side saying nothing can be done - while other people are doing the work.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

wolverine876 5y ago

> screams "government work" The 'government work' was probably done by a private contractor. Note that the OP is about a private bank. If you haven't seen results like that in private business, you've lived a charmed life!