Re:The Norway Problem
by andrepd on Saturday April 03, 2021 @08:25AM
(#26680493)
I'd say the more general problem is a bad type system! In any language with a half decent type system where you can define `type country = Argentina | ... | Zambia` this would be correctly handled at compile-time, instead of having strange dynamic weak typing rules (?) which throw runtime errors in production (???).
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I would like to see how your solution handles the case of new countries or countries changing name. Recompile and push an update? If the environment is governmental this can take a very very very long time.
The proper solution, in my opinion, is a lookup table stored in the database. It can be updated, it can be cached, it can be extended.
And for transfer of data, use formats to which you can attach a schema. This way type data is not lost on export. XML did this but everyone hates XML. And everyone hates XSD (the schema format) even more. However, if you use the proper tools with it, it is just wonderful.