[DHPersonal]

Address entries are the weirdest places of frustration. Business clients want Google Places to make address input easier. This user wants a single ZIP code entry to begin the process. Why is adding one’s own address manually that huge of a hurdle that we have to separate the user from the inputs? If there is one person in the world who should know my address, it’s me: why then put such an effort into building a site that takes away my ability to enter my address?

[hakfoo]

It's probably a turtles-all-the-way-down problem.

Three or four blank lines is probably the least hostile and most foolproof way to handle addresses.

But the cart software has distinct address-line-1, address-line-2, city, state, zip-code fields.

And the CRM they export into has similar fields.

Probably to be compatible with some further pipeline of tooling going back decades.

I suspect if you go back far enough it ends at pre-/semi-computerized data processing systems which would print addressed envelopes and documents from stacks of Hollerith cards, using extremely rigid fixed formats that were probably fine for their original buyers, likely US-centric and old enough that they were just getting it to the right city and letting the local postman figure out the nonsense on the envelope.