[ale] programming question

[Pete Hardie]

It's not a programmer failure - it's a requirements failure.  Some
marketeer or architect failed to specify
"Serial number will not include letters I and O"


On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 8:32 PM, Sean Kilpatrick <kilpatms at gmail.com> wrote:

> I know nothing of modern languages; I stopped learning  how to program
> at Cobol, Algol, and Fortran.
> But I have a question spinning off this serial number: F9IANU000217.
>
> Given that only a few lines of code should be necessary to create serial
> numbers, how much more code would be needed to exclude upper case "I"
> and "O"?
>
> This is the first time I have ever seen an upper case "I" used in a
> serial number.  The type face used for this serial number made it
> difficult to see that the third character was an "I" and not a "1".
> I have seen an upper case "O" used however, and that is even more
> stupid.
>
> For the record, the serial number above identifies an electronic device
> manufactured by a well-known company.  It didn't work out of the box,
> and after an hour with tech support I was told to return it as
> defective.
>
> Which I will do.
>
> Sean
>
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-- 
Pete Hardie
--------
Better Living Through Bitmaps
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