https://beesbuzz.biz/code/439-Falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-email

Code

Radix sort revisited  

Falsehoods programmers believe about email

2022/03/25 4:21 PM 6 months ago fluffy fluffy at beesbuzz dot biz  A
Seattle-based programmer/musician who makes games, comics, and bad
decisions. she/her or they/them

In the spirit of falsehoods programmers believe about names and time,
here's some falsehoods about email which are all too common.

Tags:

  * Email
  * Communication

In the spirit of falsehoods programmers believe about names and time,
here's some falsehoods about email which are all too common.

  * Everyone has an email address
  * Everyone has exactly one email address
  * An email address never changes
  * Whenever an address does change, it's under that user's control
  * Whenever an address does change, it's because the user
    specifically requested it to happen
  * Whenever an address does change, the old address will continue to
    work/exist
  * Any one email address refers to only one single person
  * Unique strings of characters all map to different addresses
  * All email is hosted by a centralized system
  * When email is sent to a user at a domain, it is delivered to a
    server whose address matches that domain
  * When email is sent by a user at a domain, it is sent by a server
    whose address matches that domain
  * All email comes from a .com, .net, .edu, or .org address
  * You can filter out email based on the TLD or ccTLD from which it
    originates
  * Having a particular ccTLD means that you prefer to receive
    communications in that country's native language (for example,
    .fr - French)
  * Email addresses only contain letters
  * Email addresses only contain letters and numbers
  * Email addresses only contain letters, numbers, and a handful of
    common punctuation marks (e.g. ., _, and -)
  * Email addresses will have at least one letter in them
  * An email address like ^_^@example.com or +&#@example.com is
    invalid
  * Email is a reliable transport
  * Email is an instantaneous transport
  * Emails will be sent within a few minutes of their scheduling
  * Emails will be sent within a few hours of their scheduling
  * Emails will be sent within a few days of their scheduling
  * Emails will be received soon after they're sent
  * When an email is sent it immediately goes to its destination
    server
  * If an email bounces, the address is invalid
  * If an email doesn't bounce, the address is valid
  * An address which is valid will always be valid, and an address
    which is invalid will always be invalid
  * All email is sent via SMTP over TCP/IP port 25
  * All email is sent via SMTP over TCP/IP
  * All email is sent via SMTP over IP
  * All email is sent via SMTP
  * All email servers support the various vendor extensions by the
    current "everyone uses this vendor" vendor (Microsoft, Google,
    etc.)
  * An email can only have one From: address
  * The Date: header on a message is legitimate
  * The Received: headers will always be no earlier than the Date:
    header
  * All email clients support HTML attachments
  * All email clients support HTML message bodies
  * All email clients support MIME encoding
  * Email is secure
  * Encrypted email is secure
  * All email is accessed via webmail
  * All email is accessed via webmail or IMAP
  * All email is accessed via webmail, IMAP, or POP3
  * Nobody uses email anymore

See also: email is bad

Update I'm getting some good additions from folks' responses and I'll
be adding them as I see them.

From elainemorisi:

  * Anyone with a .edu address is a student
  * Anyone with a .edu address is a student or faculty
  * Students and faculty will use their .edu address to sign up for
    all of their Internet accounts

Additional suggestions from a reddit thread:

  * All universities provide an .edu address
  * Domains will be handled uniformly between email and HTTP
  * Only the owner of an address can send mail from that address
  * Email attachment size will be accurate to the storage size of the
    attachment; relatedly, attachment filenames are the correct
    filenames for those file types, and that it's safe to extract
    attachments to those filenames
  * It is valid to remove +suffixes from email addresses (e.g.
    john+doe@example.com - john@example.com)
  * Users actually know their own email address

From Jens Alfke:

  * Email addresses are case-sensitive / can be compared by == or
    strcmp
  * A reply to an email sent to address X will come from X (this is
    the mistake made by things that say "Reply with REMOVE to
    unsubscribe")
  * If you receive email at address X, you are capable of sending
    email whose From header is X.

A good one that was posted by many folks when this post went viral
but seems to first be by benoliver999 on lobste.rs:

  * If you send a url in an email, the user will be the first to
    click it

Update, 9/1/2022: Wow, I am getting overwhelmed with comments and
suggestions. This really struck a nerve, huh!

I don't think I'll be adding any more things to this list. But here's
a few threads you can follow and post comments on:

  * r/programming thread
  * lobste.rs thread
  * Hacker News thread
  * plush.city thread

Also, I moderate every single comment that comes to this site, so
please be patient if a comment you post doesn't appear immediately.

Finally, see this followup.

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