[WayneDB]

Should I care? If I am designing a system that requires only a full legal name...then it depends on the law of the target region. If it's for almost anything else...I'm not going to waste my time unless there are more than a few complaints.

My entire point here is that if it's really important to the system being designed, that the correct answer will occur to you naturally. Honestly, if we design a system that requires full legal names and we don't look into the laws of the target region, then we're probably not too bright.

[antidoh]

So tell me, is two names United States, or any US state's law, or is it just a common assumption?

Do programmers routinely look up the law for common assumptions? I'm guessing no.

And by the way, the tone of your responses in this thread is the first time in my years of HN participation (under various user names) that I've wished for a plonk file. Everything you've said has the core of a relevant argument, wrapped in condescension.

[WayneDB]

You're missing my point. If the legal exactitude of the name is relevant to some functionality, then yes I do think that most decent engineers will naturally tend to want a reference of some sort. Otherwise, they just change whatever broken thing they did if and when it becomes a problem.

It doesn't make them any less intelligent than the author of this article. The cutesy way that list was written and that comment at the end of the article was what I was responding to earlier, but anyway...what exactly did I say to you or anyone else that was so condescending? I'm not saying that I'm not slightly intense at times, maybe I ask a lot of rhetorical questions... Sorry.

[antidoh]

My apologies.