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.
Well they are, although "less valid" is a rather strong understatement.
You do realize that that's a moral claim. In order to evaluate it in a utilitarian framework, one could look at, for example, whether women having the vote leads to better or worse policy outcomes. I think this is certainly a debatable position either way and certainly is far from obvious. Heck it might even depend on other properties of the society.
In other words, my position is outside the range of positions you're used to encountering, and you're desperately hoping I back-peddle so you don't have to think of arguments against it, in the process have to question the axioms of your philosophy.