Sure. You go ahead and create a "culturally sensitive" system that allows people to create randomly changing names based on multiple character sets and unlimited length. On an infrastructure that was put in place in 1980 with a minimal budget just to get something running quickly because it was supposed to be temporary.
Most systems aren't going to be built with infinite flexibility. Some might argue that wouldn't even be possible. And perhaps it has absolutely nothing to do with the programmer's own cultural norms, but the system they are programming on, the budget they are dealing with, and their level of competency. Not every action that is offensive to a particular group is done deliberately to offend that group or even with the knowledge that it could be offensive.
Meh. The .01% comment is perfectly relevant. Should the system be re-organized from the ground up and new licenses issued to everyone in the USA to accomodate last names of her length? I can't wait to carry around my postcard size license in my back pocket.
The system was written to work for the 99.9% of users it serves, the other 0.01% will unfortunately have to deal with the problem of being outliers.
Wrong. My argument is that there are constraints we have to deal with when programming. Those constraints make it difficult or impossible to investigate and satisfy every possible naming convention on the planet. If you happen to exclude some possible naming scheme or the one character set system you're working with won't tolerate much flexibility, that doesn't make you an offensive, rude human. And if you happen to make a judgement call and limit naming flexibility to a certain reasonable expectation, that also doesn't make you an offensive, rude human. We are under no ethical obligation to expend orders of magnitude more cost and effort to satisfy orders of magnitude fewer individuals. There's a limit. Flexibility isn't free.
It's only non-deliberate while you are ignorant of their problem. As soon as you are, it becomes part of your equation, and you're liable for underestimating its importance.
Where's that quote about lack of empathy masquerading as "brutal honesty/pragmatism/anti-PC-ness"...
Most systems aren't going to be built with infinite flexibility. Some might argue that wouldn't even be possible. And perhaps it has absolutely nothing to do with the programmer's own cultural norms, but the system they are programming on, the budget they are dealing with, and their level of competency. Not every action that is offensive to a particular group is done deliberately to offend that group or even with the knowledge that it could be offensive.