LWers try to figure things out from relatively simple principles
If you only do this you are going to fail. This is why Aristotle got physics so badly wrong, right? Reasoning has to be a cyclical process of compressing complex realities into sets of simple principles and only then are you licensed to decompress those principles into making statements about reality.
Addressing common misconceptions is worthwhile, and lists are a good way to do it. You can find similar lists in the academic literature for many different subjects, e.g., here's an article about common misconceptions in thermodynamics. I've also mentioned math books listing counterexamples before. Many counterexamples address common misconceptions.
I like to create Anki cards for common misconceptions, to make sure I don't makes these mistakes myself. One issue with this is whether correcting specific cases causes my brain to recognize a more general case....
So while many of these false beliefs are worth noting, it's worth thinking why programmers make these mistakes in practice. While it might be the case that names can include numbers, it's probably also going to be the case that the majority of numbers get into names via user error. Depending on the purpose of your database, it might be more valuable to avoid user error, than avoid a minority of users being excluded.
The reason I mention this is a lot of things in life are a study in trade offs. Quantum mechanics isn't very good at describing how big things work, and classical mechanics isn't very good at describing how small things work.
Weirdly, there is no list of falsehoods programmers believe about html (or at least a fast search didn't turn anything up).
A lot of programmers believe they can parse HTML with regular expressions.
From Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names:
anything someone tells you is their name is — by definition — an appropriate identifier for them.
There should be a list of false things people coming from common law jurisdictions believe about how choice of identity works on the rest of the globe.
Sometimes a user puts something in a "name" field that they do not actually intend to be used to identify themselves.
They may be trying to get that string displayed to other users in a highlighted fashion. If someone puts "Wal-Mart Sucks" in the name field on a blog comment, it isn't because they seriously want to be identified by the surname of Sucks. They're just saying that Wal-Mart sucks, in a dramatic way.
They may be trying to break the system in one way or another. If someone puts their name as "Robert'; drop table students; --" then depending on the social and technical context they might be giving themselves a clever alias; or they might be trying to attack the database.
I think it's worth noting that, yes, if you want your database of names/addresses/times/etc. to be fully robust, you need to essentially represent these items as unconstrained strings of arbitrary length (including zero).
However, in practice, most likely you're not building a fully robust database. For example, you are not solving the problem of, "how can I fully represent all of the marvelous variety of human names and addresses ?", but rather, "how can I maximize the changes that the packages my company is shipping to customers will actual...
Also, there is a place where the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
(Gur fha evfrf orpnhfr bs gur Rnegu'f ebgngvba, ohg rira va gur nofrapr bs gur Rnegu'f ebgngvba vg jbhyq evfr naq frg bapr n lrne orpnhfr bs ubj gur Rnegu'f nkvf cbvagf. Vs lbh ner pybfr rabhtu gb gur Abegu Cbyr, gur ebgngvba unf artyvtvoyr pbagevohgvba gb gur fha'f evfvat naq frggvat naq gur fha evfrf naq frgf cerggl zhpu bayl orpnhfr bs gur nkvf. Tb gb gur Abegu Cbyr, frr jurer gur fha evfrf, naq tb njnl sebz gur cbyr n fubeg qvfgnapr va n qverpgvba fhpu gung guvf cbvag vf gb gur jrfg.)
A problem of believing something wrong could also be a problem of classification or problem of language. There is so much lost in translation and as far as a programmer is concerned they deal with a very formal language. So they are not as good at informal languages and nuances.
I'm not a programmer, so my view may be a little bit skewed.. but this seems like a list of things that may or may not be correct (and I'd like to put things in a continuum, or percentages, or some other more practically observable other than a list) but it doesn't really get any further than that. How substantial many of the claims are?
I honestly doubt "programmers" get all these wrong. I'm not going to link to a post (I've seen some people replying with a post as if it's a substitute for actually saying what's wrong) or even say that "prog...
Could you turn the tracking links into direct ones?
The people cited in this article say you're wrong about that. (The article is on a site that makes no particular pretence of neutrality or objectivity, and the author likewise doesn't, but the reports they've collected from representatives of police departments etc. in places where such rules have been introduced are evidence regardless.)
Well, first they might have been selectively collecting them, if not engaging in worse fraud. Second these policies have been in place for less than two years, it takes time for perverse incentives to manifest. The more general problem is that left-wingers are notorious for creating policies with glaring perverse incentives and then refusing to believe anyone would actually behave so as to take advantage of them. Do you also believe that almost no one avoids getting a job so as not to loose welfare benefits or that the policy of "listen and believe" hasn't lead to many false rape accusations?
B is not just a restatement of A; one is a matter of bodily appearance, one is a matter of clothing, given name, preferred mode of address, etc.
C is not a restatement of your assertion that the person is deluded or bullshitting, it is a restatement of what you explain that way (namely that they consider themself female).
Ok, so also give the striped lion a collar saying "I'm a tiger".
Here is a thought experiment (important note: it is intended as an informative thought experiment, not a claim about what is actually happening in the brains and bodies of trans people). Imagine that after a few decades of scientific advancement it becomes possible to transplant brains into different bodies, even somewhat differently shaped bodies. Your brain is transplanted into a woman's body and given no more changes than are necessary to wire up the different bits of anatomy. Are you now a woman?
In that case there is an important difference, namely the structure of my brain and my personality, behaviors etc., are in male rather than female cluster.
they might have been selectively collecting them, if not engaging in worse fraud.
Sure. So might anyone quoting anyone about anything. What would fraud look like here? It would mean that actually there are a bunch of cases of sexual assault by trans people, or people pretending to be trans, in public restrooms. It shouldn't be too hard to find some, if so. Please feel free, and I will of course update my opinions in response to whatever you find.
these policies have been in place for less than two years
The first few days listed in the article itself: ...
There are some long lists of false beliefs that programmers hold. isn't because programmers are especially likely to be more wrong than anyone else, it's just that programming offers a better opportunity than most people get to find out how incomplete their model of the world is.
I'm posting about this here, not just because this information has a decent chance of being both entertaining and useful, but because LWers try to figure things out from relatively simple principles-- who knows what simplifying assumptions might be tripping us up?
The classic (and I think the first) was about names. There have been a few more lists created since then.
Time. And time zones. Crowd-sourced time errors.
Addresses. Possibly more about addresses. I haven't compared the lists.
Gender. This is so short I assume it's seriously incomplete.
Networks. Weirdly, there is no list of falsehoods programmers believe about html (or at least a fast search didn't turn anything up). Don't trust the words in the url.
Distributed computing Build systems.
Poem about character conversion.
I got started on the subject because of this about testing your code, which was posted by Andrew Ducker.