i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

Patrick McKenzie has identified 40 incorrect assumptions that programmers (and non-programmers) tend to make about names (of people, that is). Some of the assumptions are common "obvious" facepalms like #21:  "People’s names are globally unique" (how many Michael Davises or Ali Mohammeds are out there, do you suppose?) or #7: "People’s names do not change" (oh hi, newlyweds!).