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410 lines
20 KiB
Markdown
410 lines
20 KiB
Markdown
# Awesome Falsehood [](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome) [](https://travis-ci.org/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood)
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A curated list of awesome falsehoods programmers believe in.
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> The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.
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> - Ludwig Wittgenstein
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## Contents
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- [Foreword](#foreword)
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---
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- [Meta](#meta)
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- [Arts](#arts)
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- [Business](#business)
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- [Dates and Time](#dates-and-time)
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- [Education](#education)
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- [Emails](#emails)
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- [Geography](#geography)
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- [Human Identity](#human-identity)
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- [Internationalization](#internationalization)
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- [Multimedia](#multimedia)
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- [Networks](#networks)
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- [Phone Numbers](#phone-numbers)
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- [Postal Addresses](#postal-addresses)
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- [Science](#science)
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- [Society](#society)
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- [Software Engineering](#software-engineering)
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- [Typography](#typography)
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---
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- [Contributing](#contributing)
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- [Good Candidates](#good-candidates)
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- [*Falsehood* Articles](#falsehood-articles)
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- [Libraries](#libraries)
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- [Data Structures](#data-structures)
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- [License](#license)
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## Foreword
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*Falsehood* articles are a form of commentary on a particular subject, and are
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appreciated by the developer community at large for their effectiveness and
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terseness. They're a convenient written form to approach an unfamiliar domain
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by dispelling myths, point out common pitfalls, show inconsistencies and
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subtleties.
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In a sense, *Falsehood* articles are a suite of wordy unit-tests covering
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extensive edge-cases provided by real-world usage.
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## Meta
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- [Falsehoods Programmers
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Believe](https://spaceninja.com/2015/12/07/falsehoods-programmers-believe/) - A
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brief list of common falsehoods. A great overview and quick introduction into
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the world of falsehoods.
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- [Falsehoods About
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Programming](https://chiselapp.com/user/ttmrichter/repository/gng/doc/trunk/output/falsehoods.html) -
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A humbling and fun list on programming and programmers themselves.
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- [Falsehoods About Falsehoods
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Lists](https://kevin.deldycke.com/2016/12/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-falsehoods-lists/) -
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Meta commentary on how these falsehoods shouldn't be handled.
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## Arts
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- [Falsehoods About
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Music](https://literateprogrammer.blogspot.fr/2016/07/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about.html) -
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False assumption that might be made in codifying music.
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- [Falsehoods About Art](http://artsy.github.io/blog/2018/04/18/programmer-misconceptions-about-art/) –
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Common misconceptions about art.
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## Business
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- [Falsehoods About Online
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Shopping](http://wiesmann.codiferes.net/wordpress/?p=22201) - Covers prices,
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currencies and inventory.
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- [Falsehoods About
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Prices](https://gist.github.com/rgs/6509585) - Covers currencies, amounts and
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localization.
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- [Falsehoods About
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IBANs](https://github.com/globalcitizen/php-iban/blob/master/docs/FALSEHOODS.md) -
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International Bank Account Numbers are not immune to mistakes.
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- [Falsehoods About Job
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Applicants](https://web.archive.org/web/20170114022820/https://medium.com/@creatrixtiara/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-job-applicants-99280437c616) -
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Assumptions about job applicants and their job histories aren’t necessarily
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true.
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- [Falsehoods About
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Economics](http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2016/09/22/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-economics/) -
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Economics are not simple or rational.
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- [Falsehoods About
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Cars](https://github.com/driveto/falsehoods-about-cars) -
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Even something as common as defining a car is full of pitfalls.
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- [CLDR currency
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definitions](http://unicode.org/cldr/trac/browser/tags/release-31/common/supplemental/supplementalData.xml#L81) -
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Currency validity date ranges overlap due to revolts, invasions, new
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constitutions, and slow planned adoption.
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- [`tax`](https://github.com/commerceguys/tax) - A PHP 5.4+ tax management
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library.
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## Dates and Time
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- [Falsehoods About
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Time](http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time) -
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Seminal article on dates and time.
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- [More Falsehoods About
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Time](http://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time) -
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Part. 2 of the article above.
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- [Falsehoods About Time and Time
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Zones](https://www.creativedeletion.com/2015/01/28/falsehoods-programmers-date-time-zones.html) -
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Another takes on time-related falsehoods, with an emphasis on time zones.
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- [Critique of Falsehoods About
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Time](https://gist.github.com/thanatos/eee17100476a336a711e) - Takes on the
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first article above and provides an explanation of each falsehood, with more
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context and external resources.
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- [Your Calendrical Fallacy Is Thinking…](http://yourcalendricalfallacyis.com) -
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List covering intercalation and cultural influence, made by a community of iOS
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and macOS developers.
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- [Time Zone Database](https://www.iana.org/time-zones) - Code and data that
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represent the history of local time for many representative locations around
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the globe.
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- [The Long, Painful History of Time](http://naggum.no/lugm-time.html) - Most
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of the idiosyncrasies in time keeping can find an explanation in history.
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- [You Advocate a Calendar Reform](https://qntm.org/calendar) - Your idea will
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not work. This article tells you why.
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- [So You Want to Abolish Time Zones](https://qntm.org/abolish) – Abolishing
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timezones may sound like a good idea, but there are quite a few complications
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that make it not quite so.
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- [The Problem with Time & Timezones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY) -
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A video about why you should never, ever deal with timezones if you can help
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it.
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- [$26,000 Overcollection by Labor
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Department](http://digital.vpr.net/post/rounding-error-computer-code-leads-26000-overcollection-labor-department) -
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The consequence of wrong calendar accounting.
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- [ISO-8601, YYYY, yyyy, and why your year may be
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wrong](https://ericasadun.com/2018/12/25/iso-8601-yyyy-yyyy-and-why-your-year-may-be-wrong/) -
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String formatting of date is hard.
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- [UTC is Enough for everyone, right?](https://zachholman.com/talk/utc-is-enough-for-everyone-right) - There are edge cases about dates and time (specifically UTC) that you probably haven't thought of.
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- [Storing UTC is not a silver bullet](https://codeblog.jonskeet.uk/2019/03/27/storing-utc-is-not-a-silver-bullet/) - "Just store dates in UTC" is not always the right approach..
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- [Falsehoods about Unix Time](https://alexwlchan.net/2019/05/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-unix-time/) - Mind the leap second!
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- [Why is subtracting these two times (in 1927) giving a strange result?](https://stackoverflow.com/a/6841479/57311) - Infamous StackOverflow answer about both complicated historical timezones, and how historical dates can be re-interpreted by newer versions of software.
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## Education
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- [Falsehoods CS Students (Still) Believe Upon Graduating](https://www.netmeister.org/blog/cs-falsehoods.html) - A list of things (not only) computer science students tend to erroneously and at times surprisingly believe even though they (probably) should know better.
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## Emails
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- [I Knew How to Validate an Email Address Until I Read the
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RFC](https://haacked.com/archive/2007/08/21/i-knew-how-to-validate-an-email-address-until-i.aspx/) -
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Provides intricate examples that are unsuspected valid email addresses
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according the RFC-822.
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- [So you think you can validate email addresses (FOSDEM 2018)](https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/email_address_quiz/) -
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Presentation of edge-case email addresses and why you should not use regex to parse them.
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## Geography
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- [Falsehoods About
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Geography](http://wiesmann.codiferes.net/wordpress/?p=15187) - Takes on places,
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their names and locations.
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- [Falsehoods About
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Maps](http://www.atlefren.net/post/2014/09/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-maps/) -
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Covers coordinates, projection and GIS.
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## Human Identity
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- [Falsehoods About
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Names](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/) -
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The article that started it all.
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- [Falsehoods About
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Names – With Examples](https://shinesolutions.com/2018/01/08/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names-with-examples/) -
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A revisited version of the article above, this time with detailed explanations.
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- Falsehoods About Gender: [#1](https://gist.github.com/garbados/f82604ea639e0e47bf44) &
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[#2](https://medium.com/gender-2-0/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-gender-f9a3512b4c9c) -
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Gender is part of human identity and has its own subtleties.
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- [Gay Marriage: The Database Engineering Perspective](https://qntm.org/gay) -
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How to store a marriage in a database while addressing most of the falsehoods
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about gender, naming and relationships.
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- [Falsehoods Programmers Believe About
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Families](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/03/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-families/) -
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You can't really define a family with strict rules.
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- [Personal Names Around the
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World](https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names) - How do
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people's names differ around the world, and what are the implications for the
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Web?
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- [XKCD #327: Exploits of a
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Mom](https://xkcd.com/327/) - Funny take on how implementation of a falsehood
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might lead to security holes.
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- [Hello, I’m Mr. Null. My Name Makes Me Invisible to
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Computers](https://www.wired.com/2015/11/null/) - Real-life example on how
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implemented falsehood has negative impact on someone's life.
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- [My name causes an issue with any booking!](https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/149323/my-name-causes-an-issue-with-any-booking-names-end-with-mr-and-mrs) -
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Old airline reservation systems considers the `MR` suffix as `Mister` and drops it.
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- [HL7 v3
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RIM](https://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/product_brief.cfm?product_id=186) -
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A flexible data model for representing human names.
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- [Apple iOS
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`NSPersonNameComponentsFormatter`](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Miscellaneous/Reference/NSPersonNameComponentsFormatter_Class/index.html) -
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Localized representations of the components of a person’s name.
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- [Falsehoods About Me](https://skylarmacdonald.com/falsehoods/) - Issues at the
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intersection of names and gender and internationalisation.
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## Internationalization
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- [Falsehoods About
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Language](http://garbled.benhamill.com/2017/04/18/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-language) -
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Translating a software from English is not as straightforward as it seems to
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be.
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- [i18n Testing Data](https://github.com/patch/i18n-testing) - Real-word
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international and diverse name data for unit testing and QA.
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- [Internationalis(z)ing Code](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j74jcxSunY) -
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A video about things you need to keep in mind when internationalizing your
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code.
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- [Minimum to Know About Unicode and Character Sets](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/10/08/the-absolute-minimum-every-software-developer-absolutely-positively-must-know-about-unicode-and-character-sets-no-excuses/) - Character encoding doesn't have to be baffling, but it helps to have a basic set of knowledge
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- [Ode to a shipping label](http://i.imgur.com/4J7Il0m.jpg) - Character encoding is hard.
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## Multimedia
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- [Falsehoods About
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Video](https://haasn.xyz/posts/2016-12-25-falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-%5Bvideo-stuff%5D.html) -
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Cover it all: video decoding and playback, files, image scaling, color spaces
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and conversion, displays and subtitles.
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## Networks
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- [Falsehoods About
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Networks](http://blog.erratasec.com/2012/06/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about.html) -
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Covers TCP, DHCP, DNS, VLANs and IPv4/v6.
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- [Fallacies of Distributed
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Computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_distributed_computing) -
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Assumptions that programmers new to distributed applications invariably make.
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- [There’s more than one way to write an IP address](https://ma.ttias.be/theres-more-than-one-way-to-write-an-ip-address/) - Some parts of the address are optional, mind the decimal and octal notations, and [don't forget IPv6](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20390981) either.
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- [`hostname-validate`](https://github.com/jakeogh/hostname-validate) - An attempt to validate hostnames in Python.
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## Phone Numbers
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- [Falsehoods About Phone
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Numbers](https://github.com/googlei18n/libphonenumber/blob/master/FALSEHOODS.md) -
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Covers phone numbers, their representation and meaning.
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- [`libphonenumber`](https://github.com/googlei18n/libphonenumber) - Google's
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common Java, C++ and JavaScript library for parsing, formatting, and validating
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international phone numbers. Also available for
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[C#](https://github.com/twcclegg/libphonenumber-csharp),
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[Objective-C](https://github.com/iziz/libPhoneNumber-iOS),
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[Python](https://github.com/daviddrysdale/python-phonenumbers),
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[Ruby](https://github.com/sstephenson/global_phone) and
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[PHP](https://github.com/giggsey/libphonenumber-for-php).
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## Postal Addresses
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- [Falsehoods About
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Addresses](https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-addresses/) -
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Covers streets, postal codes, buildings, cities and countries.
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- [Falsehoods About
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Residence](https://twitter.com/samphippen/status/813896916534784004) -
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It's not only about the address itself, but the relationship between a person and its residence.
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- [Letter Delivered Despite No Name, No
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Address](https://twitter.com/loriskumo/status/735851511331356672) - Ultimate
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falsehood about postal addresses: you do not need one.
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- [The Bear with Its Own ZIP Code](https://kottke.org/19/08/the-bear-with-its-own-zip-code) -
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Smokey Bear has his own ZIP Code (`20252`) because he gets so much mail.
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- [Regex and Postal
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Addresses](https://smartystreets.com/articles/regular-expressions-for-street-addresses) -
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Why regular expressions and street addresses do not mix.
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- [`libaddressinput`](https://github.com/googlei18n/libaddressinput) - Google's
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common C++ and Java library for parsing, formatting, and validating
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international postal addresses.
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- [`addressing`](https://github.com/commerceguys/addressing) - A PHP 5.4+
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addressing library, powered by Google's dataset.
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- [`postal-address`](https://github.com/scaleway/postal-address) - Python
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module to parse, normalize and render postal addresses.
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- [`address`](https://github.com/Boostport/address) - Go library to validate
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and format addresses using Google's dataset.
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## Science
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- [Falsehoods About Systems of
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Measurement](https://www.stevemoser.org/posts/dev/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-systems-of-measurement.html) -
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On working with systems of measurement and converting between them.
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## Society
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- [Falsehoods About Political
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Appointments](https://twitter.com/oliver_dw/status/737930439575404544) -
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Designing election systems has its own tricks.
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- [Falsehoods About Women In
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Tech](https://gist.github.com/Su-Shee/5d1a417fa9de19c15477) - Myth about women
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in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) industries.
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## Software Engineering
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- [Falsehoods About
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Versions](https://github.com/xenoterracide/falsehoods/blob/master/versions.md) -
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Attributing an identity to a software release might be harder than thought.
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- [Falsehoods About Build
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Systems](https://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/174763.html) - Building software is
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hard. Building software that builds software is harder.
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- [Myths About File
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Paths](https://yakking.branchable.com/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-file-paths/) -
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Diversity of file-systems and OSes makes file paths a little harder than we
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might think of.
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- [Falsehoods About REST
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APIs](http://slinkp.com/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-apis.html) -
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Pitfalls to be mindful of when creating and documenting APIs.
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- [Falsehoods About
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CSVs](https://donatstudios.com/Falsehoods-Programmers-Believe-About-CSVs) -
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While RFC4180 to exists, it is far from definitive and goes largely ignored.
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- [Falsehoods About Package
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Managers](https://meta-package-manager.readthedocs.io/en/develop/falsehoods.html) -
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Covers package and their managers.
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- [Falsehoods About
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Testing](https://club.ministryoftesting.com/t/falsehoods-testers-believe/1371) -
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An attempt to establish a list of falsehoods about testing.
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- [Big List of Naughty
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Strings](https://github.com/minimaxir/big-list-of-naughty-strings) - Challenge
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your assumptions about strings.
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- [Popular misconceptions about mtime](https://apenwarr.ca/log/20181113) - Part
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of a post on why file mtime comparison could be considered harmful.
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- [Falsehoods About
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Pagination](https://www.hezmatt.org/~mpalmer/blog/2018/12/12/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-pagination.html) -
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Why your pagination algorithm is giving someone (possibly you) a headache.
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- [Rules for Autocomplete](http://jeremymikkola.com/posts/2019_03_19_rules_for_autocomplete.html) -
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Not falsehoods *per-se*, but still a great list of good practices to implement autocompletion.
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- [9999999999999999.0 - 9999999999999998.0](http://geocar.sdf1.org/numbers.html) - A
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kind of falsehood on numbers, and floats vs decimals.
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- [Falsehoods About Search](https://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2019/05/29/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-search/) -
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Why search (including analysis, tokenization, highlighting) is deceptively
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complex.
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- [Hi! My name is...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIebelIpdYk) - This talk could have been named falsehoods about in usernames (and other identifiers).
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- [Myths about /dev/urandom](https://www.2uo.de/myths-about-urandom) - There are a few things about /dev/urandom and /dev/random that are repeated again and again. Still they are false.
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- [Myths about CPU Caches](https://software.rajivprab.com/2018/04/29/myths-programmers-believe-about-cpu-caches/) - Misconceptions about caches often lead to false assertions, especially when it comes to concurrency and race conditions.
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## Typography
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- [Falsehoods About Fonts](https://github.com/RoelN/Font-Falsehoods) -
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Assumptions about typography on the web and in desktop applications.
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- [Truths programmers should know about case](https://www.b-list.org/weblog/2018/nov/26/case/) - A complete reverse of
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the falshoods format, on the topic of case (as in uppercase and lowercase text).
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## Contributing
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Your contributions are always welcome! Please take a look at the [contribution
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guidelines](CONTRIBUTING.md) first.
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## Good Candidates
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Here is a non-restrictive list of items which are good candidates for inclusion
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in this awesome list.
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### *Falsehood* Articles
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Articles following the *falsehood* scheme are prime candidates for inclusion in
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this awesome list.
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These articles starts with the hypothesis that developers have a naive, simple
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view of the subject at hand. Then proceed to list a set of candid assumptions
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that might be held by such programmers. Each one is intentionally false, and
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sometimes illustrated by a counter-example.
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A list of falsehood is crafted as a progression that is designed to refine
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concepts. Having read the whole list of falsehood, the reader should possess a
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global, if not complete, overview of the domain being targeted by the article,
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including most, if not all, its pitfalls, edges-cases and inconsistencies.
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In the worst case, these articles might provoke an emotional reaction and cause
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flipping table. `(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻`
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Articles featuring items that are applicable to a product and a product only
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can't really be considered as generic falsehood articles and should be avoided.
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||
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### Libraries
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||
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When possible, we provide a list of programming libraries or modules that may
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||
solve, or try to, the complexities and idiosyncrasies pointed by the
|
||
*falsehood* articles above.
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So we can put back tables in place. `┬─┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)`
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### Data Structures
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Data models and structures generic enough to cover and address most of the
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falsehoods are also welcome in this page.
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||
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||
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## License
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||
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||
[](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
|
||
|
||
Content of this repository is licensed under the [Creative Commons CC0
|
||
license](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).
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||
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||
To the extent possible under law, [Kevin Deldycke](https://kevin.deldycke.com)
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has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.
|