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Comment by lovecg | Hacker News Reader

I believe the article that started it all is https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-... - crucially every entry is self-explanatory, which is a point that a lot of the subsequent “Falsehood…” list authors miss.

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Every point is not self-explanatory, and some are clearly true (while the assumption is they must be false). For instance, it surely is true that any name will fit in under a Terabyte of text, if it can be encoded at all (and assuming the contrary is counter-productive). Claiming you should not assume any name can be spelled in Unicode is absurd as well. And, yes, it's perfectly fine to assume that if your system must have "real" (i.e. proved by any kind of document) names, you won't have to deal with Klingon names (even though it isn't a huge relief, honestly, since they still can have pretty much whatever format). For most systems, even more restrictive assumptions than that are totally fine.

You don't have to defend the "original" post just because it was patio11's. This idea was awful and stupid from the very beginning, and every new post of this "series" just repeats the offence.

I think Prince proved the Unicode assertion. He had to distribute his own custom font so news outlets could continue to write about him.

No, he one proved that other people don't need to put up with your bs if you try to break conventions. Hence your use of ASCII "Prince" being entirely adequate.

Besides, AFAIK he only changed his stage name, not his legal name.

I thought he really did change his legal name, in an attempt to get out of a contract.

> Claiming you should not assume any name can be spelled in Unicode is absurd as well.

China (and Japan, and to a certain extent Korea and Viet Nam) exists? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_laws_in_China#Notable_c...

I'm pretty sure that patio11, having spent his life in Japan, would know that technology like SING glyphlets exists because of this exact issue.

(and before you answer "what are you talking about, it is in Unicode?", these characters are literally added after the relevant issue surfaced, and some characters like 𱅒 (U+31152) are recent additions that don't even render properly)

> People’s names fit within a certain defined amount of space.

For any given fixed size that people use in practice, there is a name that does not fit. This is saying "use a variable-length field for names, because there are always edge-cases".

> Jullien was born in Sisteron, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, and was baptised Louis George Maurice Adolphe Roche Albert Abel Antonio Alexandre Noë Jean Lucien Daniel Eugène Joseph-le-brun Joseph-Barême Thomas Thomas Thomas-Thomas Pierre Arbon Pierre-Maurel Barthélemi Artus Alphonse Bertrand Dieudonné Emanuel Josué Vincent Luc Michel Jules-de-la-plane Jules-Bazin Julio César Jullien. His father was Antonio Jullien, a violinist. The explanation of his unusual number of names is that when the time came for the baby to be baptised, his father had been invited to play at a concert given by the Sisteron Philharmonic Society, and considered it only polite to ask one of the members of the orchestra to be godfather: but since every member wished to be considered for the privilege, he was christened with the names of all thirty-six members of the society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis-Antoine_Jullien

I wonder what he means by France having a “weird” naming system in common use. As far as I can tell, the traditional French naming system works exactly the same way as the traditional American one (except that it’s more common for French people to have several middle names rather than zero or one, but I don’t think that’s too rare in the US either).

Maybe he’s referring to the fact that some last names are two words (e.g. Marine Le Pen), but I don’t think that’s very common…

Anyway, it could be anything, so I wish he’d said!

> I don’t think that’s too rare in the US eithe

Anecdotal, but the only people I've met in the US with more than one middle name are people who originally came from another country.

Although, I wonder if maybe that is enforced by the fact tha legal forms and similar typically assume you only have first, last, and optionally a (single) middle name.

So you are saying Donald John Trump is likely not a US born Citizen?

"more than one middle name" :)

George Herbert Walker Bush comes to mind as a native son of the US with multiple middle names. He used H. W. in politics, but that still includes some whitespace and non-traditional characters.

Or George R. R. Martin.

Perhaps he is thinking of how marriage does not change your last name, but rather gives you an extra, optional last name. [1] The French ID card has two last name fields!

[1] https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nom_d%27usage_en_France

Err. It still does by default change your name (if you're a woman). But you can ask and keep your 'maiden' (ugh) name or have both. It gets a bit trickier for kids' family names...

Perhaps he means allcaps family name followed by normal case given name.

Even that could benefit from including a counterexample in almost every point.

I saw this one first, but seems patio11 was first:

https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-program...

i thought this list was also self-explanatory. i didn't have a hard time thinking of counterexamples to any of the points, which is not true of patio11's article. but what's self-explanatory depends on your knowledge base. maybe i just know less about foreign cultures than i do about tcp

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