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Please stop writing these things. The initial name one was valid, but all these follow ups end up being a list of things hardly anyone believes, and mostly come

Please stop writing these things. The initial name one was valid, but all these follow ups end up being a list of things hardly anyone believes, and mostly come across as insulting.

acheron 3y ago
"falsehoods programmers believe" articles considered harmful.
- sdflhasjd 3y ago
  "Falsehoods blog writers believe about programmers." Never fond of these articles myself either. One I read was "Falsehoods programmers believe about names" and part of the reason they annoy me the assumption that programmers create these requirements in the first place. Like... I believe that all users are simply identified by a GUID, it's someone else that wanted your first name, family name, pet name or whatever. This one seems particularly weak though, the biggest timezone mistakes are usually made by users. We had a recent one where all the scheduling got fugged up because someone was changing the timezones to account for daylight savings. One of those things where I can laugh with my fellow programmers... "users, am i right XD", while secretly wondering how to improve the timezone selector UI.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  For fun and profit!
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
  Falsehoods programmers believe about “falsehoods programmers believe” articles
happytoexplain 3y ago
I absolutely guarantee that most programmers I work with "believe" most of these things. However, I think these lists are using the word "believe" to mean "incidentally assume in implementation". It doesn't require a conscious belief to write code that makes these assumptions.
- playingalong 3y ago
  Actually it's a good test for seniority in programming. In school they hardly ever teach these factoids. Yet in practical everyday programming you eventually run into some of these issues. Even if you are not a maintainer of a tz library.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
They don't really bother me. They aren't AI spam, and some folks may enjoy them. It's pretty easy to not click on a link, for me. TZ are a fun project. I found that it's difficult to translate a long/lat into a TZ ID, so I wrote this[0]. Works a charm. It's based on the Timezone Boundary Builder[1]. [EDIT] Looks like I'll have to revisit the tests. The latest boundary map is much smaller, and triggers a bunch of errors. Most of my tests are just around boundaries. In the meantime, use the 2023b release. [0] https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/LGV_TZ_Lookup https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/LGV_TZ_Lookup [1] https://github.com/evansiroky/timezone-boundary-builder https://github.com/evansiroky/timezone-boundary-builder
curiousgal 3y ago
I honestly did not know a lot of things listed.
BWStearns 3y ago
No one thinks developers literally believe this, but if your only information came from interacting with the code we produce then you would likely arrive at this conclusion. It's good to have assumptions called out now and then so next time we have to handle the space we can remember to decide which edge cases are relevant.
lxgr 3y ago
"Falsehoods" articles will continue until the average truthfulness of programmer beliefs increases. And since there's always new programmers entering the market, there's a never-ending supply of people who these articles might just save a lot of headache, myself included at some point. "Problem x is very hard, don't make solving it part of your plan" is some of the best advice you can get. It can be fun to still try, but maybe not in production or on a timeline.
nzach 3y ago
I think this title was a little too clickbaity for this article as they don't show anything too surprising about timezones. Even then I really don't mind that much, especially when you consider how many articles exists that argue the only correct way to handle multiple timezones is to always convert to UTC before saving.
sophacles 3y ago
And yet I've encountered software that fails to account for most of the items on most of the lists. Heck - I live in a house that has an address like this: 123 1/2 Some St There are at least another dozen 1/2 addresses in my neighborhood alone. Yet for some reason about half the websites I try to order from refuse to accept it as a valid address. My driver's license is cool with that address, but several state government websites even refuse to accept it as an address. This isn't even a weird example like Nepal time. As another commentor said - people probably wouldn't state "i believe no addresses include fractional lot numbers" but they would likely state: "I believe anyone in the US can order from my site" - which is basically the same thing (pedantic quibbling aside).
- greenyoda 3y ago
  > 123 1/2 Some St There's a similar "falsehoods" list devoted to addresses, which mentions fractional numbers: https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/ https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a... Apparently, there are even street names that contain fractions, such as "43rd ½ St". Imagine the problems of living at "123 ½ 43rd ½ St"!
AndrewStephens 3y ago
You can scoff but I have maintained and fixed code that assumed more than one of these falsehoods. I think it is a pretty fair title, would you prefer "Common assumptions about timezones that turn out to be wrong"?

Please stop writing these things. The initial name one was valid, but all these follow ups end up being a list of things hardly anyone believes, and mostly come across as insulting.

acheron 3y ago

"falsehoods programmers believe" articles considered harmful.

sdflhasjd 3y ago
"Falsehoods blog writers believe about programmers." Never fond of these articles myself either. One I read was "Falsehoods programmers believe about names" and part of the reason they annoy me the assumption that programmers create these requirements in the first place. Like... I believe that all users are simply identified by a GUID, it's someone else that wanted your first name, family name, pet name or whatever. This one seems particularly weak though, the biggest timezone mistakes are usually made by users. We had a recent one where all the scheduling got fugged up because someone was changing the timezones to account for daylight savings. One of those things where I can laugh with my fellow programmers... "users, am i right XD", while secretly wondering how to improve the timezone selector UI.
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
For fun and profit!
SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
Falsehoods programmers believe about “falsehoods programmers believe” articles

happytoexplain 3y ago

I absolutely guarantee that most programmers I work with "believe" most of these things. However, I think these lists are using the word "believe" to mean "incidentally assume in implementation". It doesn't require a conscious belief to write code that makes these assumptions.

playingalong 3y ago
Actually it's a good test for seniority in programming. In school they hardly ever teach these factoids. Yet in practical everyday programming you eventually run into some of these issues. Even if you are not a maintainer of a tz library.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

They don't really bother me. They aren't AI spam, and some folks may enjoy them. It's pretty easy to not click on a link, for me. TZ are a fun project. I found that it's difficult to translate a long/lat into a TZ ID, so I wrote this[0]. Works a charm. It's based on the Timezone Boundary Builder[1]. [EDIT] Looks like I'll have to revisit the tests. The latest boundary map is much smaller, and triggers a bunch of errors. Most of my tests are just around boundaries. In the meantime, use the 2023b release. [0] https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/LGV_TZ_Lookup https://github.com/LittleGreenViper/LGV_TZ_Lookup [1] https://github.com/evansiroky/timezone-boundary-builder https://github.com/evansiroky/timezone-boundary-builder

curiousgal 3y ago

I honestly did not know a lot of things listed.

BWStearns 3y ago

No one thinks developers literally believe this, but if your only information came from interacting with the code we produce then you would likely arrive at this conclusion. It's good to have assumptions called out now and then so next time we have to handle the space we can remember to decide which edge cases are relevant.

lxgr 3y ago

"Falsehoods" articles will continue until the average truthfulness of programmer beliefs increases. And since there's always new programmers entering the market, there's a never-ending supply of people who these articles might just save a lot of headache, myself included at some point. "Problem x is very hard, don't make solving it part of your plan" is some of the best advice you can get. It can be fun to still try, but maybe not in production or on a timeline.

nzach 3y ago

I think this title was a little too clickbaity for this article as they don't show anything too surprising about timezones. Even then I really don't mind that much, especially when you consider how many articles exists that argue the only correct way to handle multiple timezones is to always convert to UTC before saving.

sophacles 3y ago

And yet I've encountered software that fails to account for most of the items on most of the lists. Heck - I live in a house that has an address like this: 123 1/2 Some St There are at least another dozen 1/2 addresses in my neighborhood alone. Yet for some reason about half the websites I try to order from refuse to accept it as a valid address. My driver's license is cool with that address, but several state government websites even refuse to accept it as an address. This isn't even a weird example like Nepal time. As another commentor said - people probably wouldn't state "i believe no addresses include fractional lot numbers" but they would likely state: "I believe anyone in the US can order from my site" - which is basically the same thing (pedantic quibbling aside).

greenyoda 3y ago
> 123 1/2 Some St There's a similar "falsehoods" list devoted to addresses, which mentions fractional numbers: https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/ https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a... Apparently, there are even street names that contain fractions, such as "43rd ½ St". Imagine the problems of living at "123 ½ 43rd ½ St"!

AndrewStephens 3y ago

You can scoff but I have maintained and fixed code that assumed more than one of these falsehoods. I think it is a pretty fair title, would you prefer "Common assumptions about timezones that turn out to be wrong"?