Wrong things that programmers believe, a curated list

Kevin Deldycke has collected a "curated list" of "awesome falsehoods programmers believe in," sorted by subject into meta, business, dates and time, emails, geography, human identity, networks, phone numbers, postal addresses and software engineering.


We've highlighted some of these in the past — the articles about peoples' names were a big hit during the G+ Nym Wars — but others are new to me. I'm also pretty fond of the Big List of Naughty Strings, which gives me all kinds of bad ideas.

Street names always end in descriptors like 'street', 'avenue', 'drive', 'square', 'hill' or 'view'

They don't always – for example: Piccadilly, London, W1J 9PN

OK, but when they do have a descriptor there will only be one

A street name can be entirely descriptors: 17 Hill Street, London, W1J 5LJ or Avenue Road, Toronto, Ontario.

OK, but when they do have a descriptor it will be at the end

French addresses use prefix descriptors like 'rue', 'avenue', 'place' and 'allee'.

OK, but if there's a descriptor it'll be at the start or end of the street name.

Or the middle, like 3 Bishops Square Business Park, Hatfield, AL10 9NA

OK, but at the very least you wouldn't name a town Street

Actually there's a town called Street in Somerset, UK.

Awesome Falsehood [Kevin Deldycke/Github]


(via 4 Short Links)


(Image: Belief Venn diagram, Dando Dangerslice, PD)