编程与软件工程mjt.me.uk编辑精选
程序员对地址信以为真的谬误
Falsehoods programmers believe about addresses
2013 — 2020，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇文章列举了程序员对“地址”的常见错误假设（如地址一定有街道名、邮编不会以零开头、地址一定存在于邮政数据库中等），说明现实世界的地址格式千奇百怪。它提醒开发者不要对地址数据做过强的结构化假设，否则会不断遇到反例。
为什么经久不衰：地址系统的多样性随全球化业务持续暴露，这篇文章多年后仍是设计表单和数据模型时避免过度工程化的经典提醒。
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实践反例：完全自由文本的地址输入也会失败，分字段询问仍有必要。
我很早就读了这篇文章并认真对待，于是不再分别询问地址、邮编、城市、州省，只放一个大文本框标注“完整地址”，让用户自由填写。结果 80% 的用户只填了街道地址，不填邮编、城市和州省——即使他们来自地址格式通常包含这些信息的国家。最后我们只好改回原来明确分字段询问的表单。
FooBarWidget查看英文原文
I read this article a long time ago and I took it seriously. So instead of asking for address, postal/zip code, city, state/province, I just put up a big text area labeled "Full address" so that people have complete freedom about what to fill in. 80% of the users ended up only filling in their street address, not their postal/zip code, city and state/province, even though they're from countries where (most?) addresses satisfy that format. We ended up reverting to the previous form where we explicitly asked for postal/zip code etc.
依赖邮政数据库做地址校验会给非标准地址的用户带来真实麻烦。
“地址会存在于国家邮政数据库中”这条我踩过坑——不是因为新楼或船屋，只是因为当地邮局两街区范围内不做上门投递，我们只能用邮政信箱。麻烦在于需要街道地址的商家用 USPS 数据库做地址校验：有的不寄送邮政信箱的网店会弹“你确定吗”的提示，有的直接拒绝。更糟的是，本地垃圾清运公司被大型区域公司收购后，路线规划软件显然用了 USPS 数据库，结果我们整条街的地址都被从收运路线中删掉了。
edmccard查看英文原文
"An address will exist in the country's postal service's database" This is the one that I've run afoul of -- not because I live in a brand-new building, or a houseboat, or 30 miles from anywhere on an unnamed road; it's just that there is no door-to-door delivery for houses within a 2-block radius of the local post office, so we have a PO box. The trouble happens when a business that needs my street address uses the USPS database for address verification. One example is online stores that don't ship to PO boxes. Some of these sites have a form with a sort of "Are you sure" prompt when my street address isn't recognized; others just refuse to accept it. Even worse was when the local company that picked up my trash was bought by one of the larger regional "waste management" operations, and all the drivers' routes were re-planned for "efficiency" (evidently using software that hit some USPS database); the upshot was that everyone on my street had their address removed from the pickup routes.
有些地方的人根本没有可用的正式地址，这是更根本的假设错误。
一个更遥远的谬误：人们根本“有地址”，或能清晰无歧义地描述自己的住所（哪怕用 GPS 坐标）。我曾住在一个完全无法指路的地方——贫穷国家的社区深处，街道没有名字，建筑没有编号，公寓也没有门牌。想收快递只能去快递公司的本地网点出示身份证代收。至于用于追责、起诉之类的“账单地址”，我基本认为不可能实现。
hawkice查看英文原文
A falsehood only distantly alluded to: That people have addresses at all, or can describe their residence in an unambiguous or clear way (even using GPS coordinates). I used to live in a place I couldn't even remotely give directions to. It was deep within a neighborhood of a poorer country, none of the streets had names, none of the buildings are numbered. I lived in an building where none of the apartments had numbers or names. If I wanted something delivered, I would go to a local shop for the company delivering it, and show my ID, and they would have it routed there if it wasn't in the building already. If you wanted a billing address for, I don't know, tracking me down, initiating lawsuits, something like that? I honestly just assume that's impossible.
文章本身也有盲区：日本等非西方体系提供了更多反例。
文章仍然以西方（尤其英国）为中心，更国际化的业务会发现更多反例。以日本为例：地址格式全国统一是错的（札幌有自己的体系，京都在标准体系上还有另一套）；地址从最具体到最宽泛排列（如门牌号到邮编），日本恰好相反；地址体系不会变是错的（日本 1998 年改革过）；门牌基于街道也是错的（日本基于街区）。日本标准地址基于行政区划，提供都道府县、区、町和街区号。京都允许用两条街道的交叉口加方位表示街区，因为有些区存在重名町；札幌则用距市中心的街区数加方向来定位。
masklinn查看英文原文
The article remains western- (and especially UK-) centric in outlook, a more international business will probably find plenty others. For instance japans disprove: * The address format is uniform across the country (Sapporo has its own, and Kyoto uses an alternative system on top of the standard one) * Addresses go from the most specific to least (e.g. flat number to postal code), japan is the exact opposite * Addressing systems don't change (Japan's was reformed in 1998) * Building numbers are street-based (Japan's are block-based) It also expands on things like "addresses will have a street": standard japanese addressing is subdivision-based so addresses provide the prefecture, the ward (~county), the district and the city block. Except for Sapporo and Kyoto (see 1): Kyoto allows an denoting blocks as the intersection of two streets and the position relative to the intersection (north, south, east or west). One reason is that some wards have multiple districts with the same name... Sapporo uses a system where blocks are addressed by their distance (in blocks) + direction from city center, so you might be told the address is "the 4th building, 3 blocks north and 5 blocks east".
核心教训：避免过度工程化，用自由文本字段可规避大部分特例。
最大的收获听起来很熟悉：不要过度设计数据模型。你对具体属性做的决定越多，需要处理的特例就越多（这会成为程序员和用户持续的挫败来源）。就地址而言，大多数问题都可以用自由文本字段代替街道、门牌、公寓、楼层、州、县、区等专用字段来避免。
Udo查看英文原文
The biggest takeaway for me here should sound familiar: don't overengineer your data model. The more decisions you make about specific properties, the more special cases you will need to handle (and those are a continuing source of frustration for both programmers and users down the line). In this case, most of these issues can be avoided by allowing a free text field instead of dedicated fields for street name, number, apartment, floor, state, county, district, and whatever.
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