Exactly as you say: if customers (that is, the people paying for the software, not necessarily the people filling in forms) need it, then it's a requirement.
The point is that while sorting by last name (say) might not seem important to an engineer, and requiring a last name might seem outright stupid to a person filling in a form, nevertheless it is often an important requirement. Frequently folks will observe some "stupid" form, and link to some "falsehoods engineers believe about X" document, suggesting that engineering "got it wrong", when in fact they have simply misunderstood who the software is actually for.
> What do you really need a first and last name separated for anyways? Sorting?... Sorting by last name isn't usually important...
When paying customers / clients want to sort by last name, because “that’s how we do things”, then you sort by last name. So it’s only important when you want to make money.
Edit to add: your customers also don’t care that someone somewhere has 6 first names and no last name. “This wasn’t a problem with our old software.”
I am from Minneapolis. I’m trying to imagine a fast rail connect to Chicago as being better than driving. Once in Chicago I think I’d like to have a car? It’s only a day’s drive away so I imagine I’d rather drive. Basically the net is that the US is car centric and it will be a lot of work to change that. (Which I’m on board for, it’s just not easy or quick.)
CA, USA. To be fair it’s not like everyone is smiling all the time! But I genuinely feel that my neighborhood is a great community mostly consisting of interesting and friendly people.
This feels like hyperbole. Instead of saying you are wrong objectively, I’ll say instead that my subjective experience of “the city” is in stark contrast to this. Green spaces and the ocean abound. My neighbors are wonderful people. The businesses around me are owned and operated by local people. I can’t walk down the block without running into good folks with smiles on their faces. I try to bring the same energy to my neighborhood. I couldn’t imagine not living here.
I think the city and the country and everywhere in between can be a wonderful or terrible place, but I would hesitate to say that any one place is right or wrong for any one person.
Why would they line up to work for you of all people? They can work for anyone they want, it’s somewhat of a seller’s market when it comes to programming.
I imagine just about nothing is 100% fun 100% of the time. If many parts of your work are fun, it’s fair to say your work is fun. If you’d rather be doing something else, you could try that, too. Maybe you’d like it more.
Exactly. Admire traits, but don’t (or, try not to) envy. Admiration, and the motivation that can come with it, can be good! But blind envy or jealousy can overlook the negatives that someone might be dealing with.
Olin Shivers's work on various control flow analyses, in particular the paper "CFA2: a context-free approach to control-flow analysis", is a really cool static analysis via abstract interpretation. Matt Might had a bunch of papers in a similar vein.
The point is that while sorting by last name (say) might not seem important to an engineer, and requiring a last name might seem outright stupid to a person filling in a form, nevertheless it is often an important requirement. Frequently folks will observe some "stupid" form, and link to some "falsehoods engineers believe about X" document, suggesting that engineering "got it wrong", when in fact they have simply misunderstood who the software is actually for.