I mean, every programmer I know considers stuff like this to be very interesting trivia to learn and apply. But even if you know this stuff, putting the knowledge to use often involves a series of battles against your PMs and managers and maybe even customers, who either don't know it, have their own vision, or just follow what everyone else does.
(Getting a product to work correctly is as much an exercise of diplomacy and ego management as it is a matter of technical skills.)
I remember a discussion on the Linux kernel list years ago - and I believe Linus himself at one point insisted that names with less than three characters shouldn't be accepted, as they must surely be invalid. I pointed out that when I was a student there was another student with a full name consisting of just a single letter. No first name, no last name, just that letter. And the best thing - the student loans bank's system actually handled that. A couple of times each semester there would be wide fanfold prints on the billboard wall, with each student's name and information about each student's loan application. They apparently had no issues with his single-letter name, which means that the governmental name registration system didn't either. Even though he was a foreigner, and I've never heard about any native person with just a single name (not to mention just a single letter).
I mean, every programmer I know considers stuff like this to be very interesting trivia to learn and apply. But even if you know this stuff, putting the knowledge to use often involves a series of battles against your PMs and managers and maybe even customers, who either don't know it, have their own vision, or just follow what everyone else does.
(Getting a product to work correctly is as much an exercise of diplomacy and ego management as it is a matter of technical skills.)