Woman Whose Last Name Is "Null" Keeps Running Into Trouble With Computer Systems
Ever felt like you're just not meant for this modern age? Try having the last name "Null."
Err, sorry. Please try again.
Null is the term used in computer systems the world over to indicate "no value." That's not the same as the number zero, mind you. It's more like telling the computer there's "nothing to see here." So in a field for someone's phone number, for example, a "null" there would mean that no number has been entered.
For those of a certain surname, this creates quite the headache. Just ask one Nontra Null, who took the name after marrying. Nontra recalls how she repeatedly applied for a visa at the Indian consulate to attend a friend's wedding in the country. And each time they got back, authorities said their flummoxed computer system couldn't process her application.
"I had to mentally come to terms with not being able to go," Nontra, a 41-year-old clothing designer in Burbank, California, told The Wall Street Journal. (Luckily, the visa came through the day before her flight.)
It's a struggle shared by many (including one unfortunate tech journalist). Jan Null, a 75-year-old meteorologist, told the WSJ that he now adds his first initial to his last name when making hotel reservations online. Jan learned his lesson the hard way years ago when a reservation form kept resetting whenever he entered his last name. Eventually, he called the hotel employees, who suggested entering a different last name.
Meanwhile, 36-year-old security auditor Joseph Tartaro says that for years he's been flooded with random traffic tickets from across the country ever since getting a license plate that reads, you guessed it, "NULL."
"My wife gets super pissed off about it and she hates that I still have the license plate," Tartaro told the WSJ.
Null in its current usage was invented by British computer scientist and Turing Award winner Tony Hoare. Today, it's still used by a number of programming languages, including Java and C#, but newer ones like Rust avoid it entirely. Hoare has called null his "billion dollar mistake," because it introduces vulnerabilities and can cause programs to crash.
"It's a difficult problem to solve because it's so widespread," Daan Leijen, a Microsoft researcher, told the WSJ. Leijen added that the software giant avoids using null values.
To be clear, though, it's a decreasingly prevalent — but still surprisingly common — issue. Nowadays, there's no shortage of software out there that's totally null-free. But try getting everybody to upgrade their computer systems.
More on computers: Alleged Tech Genius Elon Musk Makes Programming Joke That Makes Zero Sense
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