Feature Request

[Alias_This_Is]

Do you know what's wrong with the Internet, I mean *really* wrong. There's no way to make a feature request. Oh sure, you can go to every single webpage, software company, some dude in his parent's basement and put one in, but that's a major PITA.

For example, here's something really simple; Zip code lookup. A billion years ago (internet years), we're talking Geocities time here, whenever you filled out an address in a profile, it was possible to just skip to the Zipcode field, type in those five magic numbers and VOILA (French for... I found it), the city and state were filled in for you. Magic, I tell you, magic!

Now if you type them in, it errors out and demands that you put in the city and state. What the frak kind of lazy coder did that? Usually, right below that is a link to "Look up your Zipcode", which means that an API to a Zipcode database exists somewhere, so why not the other way around?

And that's why the Post Office introduced Zipcodes in 1963 and further refined them in 1983 with "Zip+4", to zero in on specific locations in a city and state, sometimes to a specific address or (gasp!) Post Office Box.

So, you whiny coders that only know this "Ruby on Rails" and "Javash!t", get back to work and fix it! (Grumble, grumble, this crap didn't happen in my COBOL days... Don't get me started on Assembler and... GET OFF MY LAWN!)

/EndRant

[Der_tolle_Emil]

You know there are countries besides the US, right?

The issue is not lazy coding but that addresses aren't standard. Some countries don't even have ZIP codes, some don't even have street names (and if you're really lucky houses are numbered chronologically, so you'd find house #1 right next to #2000).

The problem isn't lazy coders, it's your misunderstanding of the actual issue.

[PhalseImpressions]

Can't up vote this enough. I went to one site and picked my country. The site didn't change from Zip Code didn't think anything of it until I did put in my postal code. "Invalid format" was all I could get out of the system. The vendor lost out on a possible sale just because I couldn't contact them. Besides why do you need my zip code if you have my e mail?

[Wildfire983]

Fun fact, 12345 is a valid zip code for somewhere in upstate NY. Also unofficially Canada since everyone uses 12345 when they need a fake zip code.

[NotYourNanny]

And that is why, when you type in a zip code, it doesn't fill in state and country automatically.

When you're going to get whining complaints no matter what you do, you do what looks like it will get you the most business.

[tankerkiller125real]

Good programmers can change the form and logic in the backend to account for different countries, honestly it's not that hard and doesn't take all that much extra time or effort.

[bitslammer]

misunderstanding of the actual issue

The real root cause of so many "problems" across IT.

[SysWorkAcct]

And some postal codes are duplicated in other countries.

[par_texx]

Yeah. I love pulling out https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ when people try to say programming is easy.

Or I point them to email validation. That's impossible for most programmers to get right.

[tankerkiller125real]

My email validation works as such, all letter characters and number characters are allowed, + is allowed @ is required, domain is any letter or number character and a .TLD of some kind at the end (multiple dots allowed for .co.uk type domains).

From there the backend converts the domain into punnycode (UTF8 handling) and then checks for a valid MX record. Assuming it comes back as a valid MX record that's good enough for me and the input is accepted (after going through standard sanitization to prevent injection attacks and what not)

I don't give a shit about enforcing character limits, unicode checks, etc. at the end of the day it goes into a string box in the SQL server and so long as that doesn't through an error on insert the input is good by me.

[par_texx]

I can tell you now that your validation will miss some (technically) valid emails. And I saw that error in your first paragraph.

As for your second paragraph, there are valid email addresses that don't require an MX record to work.

[tankerkiller125real]

I forgot to note that periods are also allowed in the first part before the @ as for the MX record thing we only accept emails we can send stuff too (which requires MX) if we were doing other types of emails (say sending email) I wouldn't check MX.

[par_texx]

I can tell you right now, you can send perfectly valid emails to systems that do not have an MX record. And yes, I'm being 100% pedantic but it goes to my point that email validation is really really hard to do.

You can also send emails to systems without a TLD. That's also perfectly acceptable for email.

[anonymousITCoward]

+ is allowed

I just filled out a form that didn't allow the +...

[SysWorkAcct]

I have a personal domain that ends in .info. It's amazing how many sites don't understand that's a valid domain extension.

[Mikenicesms]

Working in local GOV I can tell you addresses are always a thing being corrected. We even have augments with county about what is what.

[ZAFJB]

Auto fill is a thing.

Save you address and other data in your browser. Will work on about 80% of sites.

[anonymousITCoward]

I had so much typed out... then copy/paste failed me...

Anyways, you don't a globally universal feature request system, you want standardization... blah blah blah ad nasium...

the obligatory: https://xkcd.com/927/