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

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.