[raganwald]

So does this mean you don't write any software that doesn't save lives? That you don't come onto Hacker News and make comments?

For whatever reason you find yourself doing a task. Gardening, washing dishes, building a web form, saving a life. Whatever it is you choose to do, why not do it as well as you know how? Why denigrate something as not being worth doing well because there are more important problems in the world?

[krick]

While you are trying to make it sound somewhat ironical that is the very reason I am on HN (and, partly the reason I left that comment): to find something that helps me to "write software that does save lives" or to find any problem that would be important enough to try and solve it.

So what I'm stating is not that I simply "do not think of that problem as of being important enough to discuss". Actually, I don't see any problem at all. And I find that both sad and funny — maybe even horrifying — that many other people see it as a problem and even important one. Because, really, there aren't many "non-live-saving" tasks, everything that makes world a better place to live is pretty much worth doing.

That arguing on topic if you should or shouldn't leave a choice between `Ms.` or `Mrs.` doesn't make world better. Actually, I wonder if it isn't accomplishing the opposite. If you are a woman and you are presented the form that asks you how you'd like to be called in the emails or whatever, seeing both `Ms.` and `Mrs.` on that form doesn't hurt you unless you have some pretty serious psychological problems. More than that it might be even annoying to be unable to choose the honorific you personally prefer. That's why you might want to leave text input for your customer to enter whatever he wants anyway.