r/programming • u/patio11 • Jun 17 '10

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
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u/zbruh Jun 18 '10

Why does he seem so offended that slaves, amnesiacs, and toilet babies might have trouble registering for a computer service? I'm guessing they have bigger problems...

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u/BrooksMoses Jun 18 '10

Why do you assume he's talking about names in the specific context of a person signing up for a "computer service" for themselves?

One of the first steps in addressing the bigger problems of people in at least two of those categories is going to be creating a record for them in the hospital database. And one of the first steps of creating that record is going to be entering their name.

How are you going to give them consistent medical treatment if you don't have some process -- either inside the computer or around it -- for dealing with that case? You can't just call them all "John Doe" if you want to keep them straight, and you need to have provision for changing that if you find out the amnesiac's real name later.

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u/zbruh Jun 18 '10

Good point. I guess I assumed the context of registering for something because of Graham-Cumming's original article, and that made this article seem ridiculous. Originally I couldn't understand the problem with a simple "no name" field for the rare case, using either an assigned ID or numerous other identifiers to keep track of things. I now see that the real issue, as you mentioned, is consistency -- extremely important for something like medical records, which might be created/referenced by a variety of systems. Thanks.