It gets thornier when it comes to personal things like names and gender.
In the case of name, I read an article sometime back that mentioned the problem of getting people's fullname right. Not everyone has a "first name" and a "last name" distinction. So it is better to just have one field of "fullname" and let people enter it as per their locale and tradition instead of having "first name" and "last name" fields. I think gender also falls in the same category.
This is the first "falsehoods programmers believe about X" article I read and what I think kicked off the trend. In fact this GitHub page references the same as "the article that started it all".
Comments
In the case of name, I read an article sometime back that mentioned the problem of getting people's fullname right. Not everyone has a "first name" and a "last name" distinction. So it is better to just have one field of "fullname" and let people enter it as per their locale and tradition instead of having "first name" and "last name" fields. I think gender also falls in the same category.
This is the first "falsehoods programmers believe about X" article I read and what I think kicked off the trend. In fact this GitHub page references the same as "the article that started it all".
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...