I found myself with occasion to tell the same story multiple times in the past couple of days, so it seems appropriate to publish it somewhere for easy reliable reference:

Years ago at a programming language conference, I finally met in person someone I’d interacted with regularly on IRC and Twitter. In those contexts, he used a handle of his choosing, and naturally, everyone referred to him by it.

I noticed that everyone was addressing him by his initials. I played along, but eventually aske...