It's surprising how many developers complain about this, here in HN and otherwise, yet STILL we have those crappy validations and autofill all over the internet.
It's worse. Few months ago we wanted to buy some specific books/toys from a local brand (we're in Poland). It was a relatively modern, small company, with appropriately modern and slick website - you'd expect everything to go smoothly, right? Unfortunately, we weren't able to complete the purchase, because whoever made their checkout page had a bright idea to integrate with...
...wait for it...
... an AI-powered address validation system, offered by some random local startup. That validation system tried to provide autocomplete and attempted to automatically segment the address in a seemingly free-form field, but something in the integration got botched, and it wasn't able to identify house numbers - and without identifying one, it would not let the check-out process to continue.
I've actually tracked down the startup making this "address validator" (who in the right mind funded them, and why companies pay for this, is beyond me); they had a demo form on the landing page, and it correctly segmented my address - which is why I know it's the integration with the particular seller that got botched. Nevertheless, I'm still in shock - why on Earth would someone do this in the first place? It's strictly worse than having multiple fields - name, street, address part 2, zip code, city, etc. Multiple fields are already bad for reasons discussed in this thread, but a single free-form field that's parsed by "AI" into colored segments as you type? What in the fuck.
Address validation is one of the major textbook cases of developers going out of their way to make their software worse.
And from the company owner's point of view: Imagine spending extra money on development that stops users from completing a purchase.
These cases are the perfect answer to "Why do we need senior developers on our team who have good judgment?" This is why--to prevent software like this from even being written in the first place.
...wait for it...
... an AI-powered address validation system, offered by some random local startup. That validation system tried to provide autocomplete and attempted to automatically segment the address in a seemingly free-form field, but something in the integration got botched, and it wasn't able to identify house numbers - and without identifying one, it would not let the check-out process to continue.
I've actually tracked down the startup making this "address validator" (who in the right mind funded them, and why companies pay for this, is beyond me); they had a demo form on the landing page, and it correctly segmented my address - which is why I know it's the integration with the particular seller that got botched. Nevertheless, I'm still in shock - why on Earth would someone do this in the first place? It's strictly worse than having multiple fields - name, street, address part 2, zip code, city, etc. Multiple fields are already bad for reasons discussed in this thread, but a single free-form field that's parsed by "AI" into colored segments as you type? What in the fuck.