April 9, 2007

Dear Developers of Multimillion Dollar Web Applications

Please go and purchase this book and read it cover-to-cover.

Failing that, please familiarize yourself with some of the contents.

Failing that, please at least be aware that when you have a stringy thing, you can do stringy-type things to it.

Thanks and best regards,

The Internet-Using Public

Addendum: If all of the above proves too difficult, I have developed a revolutionary new software product that I call the Goer "Telephone Number" "Parser". While I can't reveal the exact nature of my top-secret proprietary implementation, I can sketch out the the basics of the algorithm:

  1. Strip all non-numeric characters from the string.
  2. Are there ten characters?
    • YES: Congratulations! You have a valid US telephone number!
    • NO: D'oh! Return an error to the user.

You can purchase this amazing product for the low, low price of $750/CPU, or $15000 for a corporate site license. Advanced users might be interested in the Goer "Telephone Number" "Parser" Enterprise Edition, which not only handles phone numbers for over 50 non-US locales, but even tackles tricky edge cases, such as numbers that start with a "1". Order today!

Comments

  1. It continually amazes me how awful some of the validation routines out there are, including ones that:

    • Expect my phone number to be in a specific format (usually without telling me beforehand)
    • Think that the character “+” is not valid in e-mail addresses
    • Don’t let me put a space in my credit card number, even though it’s written that way on my card
    • Ask me for my house number separately from my street, and then reject the fact that my house number ends in a “1/2”

    Please: either do good validation or none at all. Don’t make me, say, order a $1000 lens from someone else because you don’t like my address.

    Posted by Wade on Apr. 09, 2007 at 11:38 PM [#]

  2. Bingo! The reason for this post was a form that, without telling you beforehand, required you to enter the telephone number as ten digits with no spaces. Pretty natural, eh? If you had the temerity to enter 408) 123-4567, you got a big honking error screen.

    But at least I was able to complete the form. It’s pretty amazing that developers will design forms that force users to go elsewhere. Aren’t shopping carts a solved problem?

    Posted by Evan on Apr. 10, 2007 at 5:56 AM [#]

  3. It’s the whole “Not Invented Here” Syndrome.

    “We didn’t develop it, why should we use a commonly referenced regex expression that builds on a common code base for a retailer that does something like we do? After all, the developers need some easy tickmarks on the project plan. Plus, what you’re talking about is “Site Design“‘s fault. They’re the ones who’re supposed to capture user requirements and site flow. sniff”

    Posted by Dru on Apr. 10, 2007 at 8:00 AM [#]

  4. I think it’s also Contractor Syndrome. If they pulled some tried-and-true code off the shelf, they couldn’t charge their client for the time required to reinvent the same thing, badly.

    Posted by Evan on Apr. 10, 2007 at 8:59 AM [#]

  5. Amen, brother. As an example - I love Gmail (I know, I know - I’m not supposed to say that to you), but it’s search functionality stinks.

    Posted by Russ on Apr. 10, 2007 at 11:26 AM [#]

  6. What really gets me are airfare purchase sites that say, “Please enter your name EXACTLY AS IT READS ON YOUR CREDIT CARD,” but then says “No punctuation in the Last Name field” when I try to do so. I mean, which do they want? Hyphen-less, or Exactly As On Credit Card? And what unreasonably lazy-ass programmer said, “Let’s just limit this field to alphabetical characters because it’s too damn hard to allow hyphens, spaces, periods, and mixed case”?

    Grrrrumph!

    Posted by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little on Apr. 10, 2007 at 1:05 PM [#]

  7. I have the same problem — my credit card says “R Michael Harman”, and NUMEROUS sites that demand my name exactly as on credit card then refuse to accept a space in first name or an actual middle name (rather than a single middle initial).

    Idiots.

    Posted by Auros on Apr. 10, 2007 at 1:19 PM [#]

  8. Russ — In Google’s defense, vertical search is really really hard.

    Nikki and Auros — this is completely your fault for not choosing Internet-compliant names. My name:

    • is only eight characters (thirteen with the middle name)
    • has no funky punctuation
    • includes a very rare last name, making sensible userIDs easy to come by
    • is easy to remember (at Potlatch someone recognized me by connecting my nametag to a few rare posts I’ve made at Making Light)

    My sisters have excellent names along these lines too. Are my parents awesome or what? The only downside is that on the phone, people who don’t know me personally often have trouble spelling my name correctly. But is that really a bug, or a feature?

    Posted by Evan on Apr. 10, 2007 at 1:42 PM [#]

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