Also awful
While I’m complaining about geo, let’s drag up some old links about other things I hate working with.
On 24 January 1918 Lenin signed a decree that moved the brand-new Soviet Union from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. In order to bridge the 14-day gap between Julian and Gregorian, 1-13 February 1918 were omitted, so that 31 January was directly followed by 14 February.
– Making <time> safe for historians
In “I scanned %g directories”, you’d expect “directories” to be in the accusative case (since it is the direct object in the sentnce) and the plural number, except where $directory_count is 1, then you’d expect the singular, of course. Just like Latin or German. But! Where $directory_count % 10 is 1 (“%” for modulo, remember), assuming $directory count is an integer, and except where $directory_count % 100 is 11, “directories” is forced to become grammatically singular, which means it gets the ending for the accusative singular.
– A Localization Horror Story: It Could Happen To You
People whose names break my system are weird outliers. They should have had solid, acceptable names, like 田中太郎.
– Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names
This is why I hate working on software that deals with space, time, people and languages.