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A comment on List of falsehoods programmers believe in. Parent comment

Re:List of falsehoods programmers believe in by EvilTerran on Monday February 13, 2017 @02:36PM (#13638028)
I suppose that could be referring to "John/Jane Doe" situations - when someone turns up who may have a name, but you have no way of ascertaining it (because they're not carrying ID, and are unresponsive, dead, or otherwise unable to tell you themselves). Not really a relevant concern for most programming situations, but it could catch you out if you're writing software for medical/police reports, for instance.

Or, for a rarer subcase where the person genuinely has no name at all - consider "feral children": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

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Re:List of falsehoods programmers believe in by ska on Monday February 13, 2017 @03:33PM (#13638499)
This is specific case of the more general flaw in a lot of design work - "I have a collection of things, these things always have an X with property Y, so I'll just organize/key them that way".

This works great until property Y is violated... or until you run into one without "an X". Most times you are better off to just start with unique identifiers and avoid breaking logic.

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Re:List of falsehoods programmers believe in by Sammi on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @02:03AM (#13641780)
The most common example is actually scandinavian unbabtised babies. It's quite common to keep the name secret until the big reveal in the church when the child is several months old. I believe that here in denmark you aren't required by law to submit a name until the child is 6 months old.
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Re:List of falsehoods programmers believe in by bryanrasmussen on Tuesday February 14, 2017 @07:36AM (#13643073)
you can go past 6 months without naming your child but you are fined, I can't remember at which point the child will be given a name if you won't provide one.

Also of course if you give your child a name that is not recognized as a name by the name register there is a process for okaying that name, so in that case your child can have a name in the family but not an official governmental name yet.

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