OK, this is very nerdish. But here’s another one! I’m filling in a stupid form for Chris, with freeform text boxes. The instructions for these state:
Please limit each comment field to 2500 characters or less. Text should be typed in a continuous line, without using carriage returns.
Did someone uninvent input handling while I wasn’t looking?
whatareyoutalkingabout
everybodyknowsthatsthewayitssupposedtobereallydavidyoushouldkeepupwiththesechanges
Inputhandling
Mrsmithweatpleasurecoreneedthinkthisnewideaofdatahandlingisgreatpleasetellusmore
Try California unemployment department
They do that, except the limits are 250 characters. You can just about fit a job title in that. Forget company names and dates, job descriptions, lists of acronyms etc.
When speaking to the Pauline equivalent I mentioned this and she said it was because they hadn’t updated the code since the mid-1980s. I sit there at the edge of Silicon Valley surrounded by tens of thousands of unemployed programmers amused at how the agency responsible for giving them $370 a week can’t figure out how to use any of them to update their damn system (which every unemployed person has to fill in otherwise they revoke your eligibility).