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I think it can be useful for communicating emergency location... but yes it seems like you would need your GPS on in which case it's better if your phone just texts or otherwise shares the location with whomever needs it. Maybe it's good for sharing location verbally over a call.

I think, it is similar what hexadecimal is to binary. It is its human-readable nature that is useful, yet, it is not immediately apparent how so--especially to the layman.

OLC is also not the same as a GPS coordinate. What you get is not a point but a block, the size of which you can decide.

The purpose of pulse codes are explained on the very first line of the linked page. (emphasis mine)

> A plus code is like a street address for people or places that don't have one.

Not everybody has a stable living situation at a building with a fixed address. Yet it's extremely important for people to be able to receive mail or packages, especially for people attempting to lift themselves out of poverty.

This system doesn't look like a replacement to the existing address system, they can both be used. But as you point out, it won't matter much until people start to adopt this as a standard.

It won’t be adopted as a standard until it’s reasonably usable. Right now it clearly isn’t. You can’t just drop off a package or a letter somewhere within the square.

If you live in the countryside with few or none street addresses and a really low population density (like a really big part of the african population) then you can.

But then I assume the postal service doesn't deliver to you anyways, and you're the one who goes to your local post office every few days to pick up mail and packages?

Just because you have coordinates doesn't mean it's suddenly cost-effective for the post office to deliver.

As someone who lives in Manhattan, there are many buildings that have entrances on 2-3 different streets: having an address that specifies where the entrance actually is is a feature.

That sounds like something that's solved by a street name & number?

Buildings generally only have one address, usually considered to be wherever the "main entrance" to the building is AFAIK. Additional entrances to the same building could probably be identified by the street they're on, but they won't have been assigned a street number.

> But for replacing addresses, there's no obvious 1-1 correspondance between a plus code and a building. A large building may span 20 or more plus codes, so which one would you use?

This same situation already exists for street numbers and doesn't present a big problem.

Redevelop a single-family house into a duplex and you may need to split an address. The usual solution is to add onto it, so that 1234 Elm Street because 1234A Elm and 1234B Elm.

Or redevelop a block of houses into a single, large apartment community and you might consolidate several parcels of land with their own street address into one. The usual solution is to just pick one arbitrarily. Maybe your property consolidates the land for 1230, 1232, 1234, 1238, and 1240 Elm, so you pick 1234 Elm because it is catchy.

In both cases, you put up a sign on your building or mailbox, and that's enough information for people to start using it.

I'm always disappointed that these systems are so hard to reason about. Plus codes are better than hashing schemes, but still require base 20 math. It's not clear to me what they're for.

MGRS is also based on 100x100km grid squares and it just uses easting and northing from the southwest corner. e.g.

4QFJ 1234 5678 is in square 4QFJ, at 12340m east and 56780m north with 10m accuracy.

4QFJ 12341 56789 is is in square 4QFJ, at 12341m east and 56789m north with 1m accuracy.

If there's a football field roughly half a kilometre to the north, that would be 4QFJ 123 573.

At the edge of the grid square, you may define an easting or northing that exceeds the bounds of the square. That's also fine.

MGRS is a much more complicated system for computers, but humans can create new coordinates and express the precision of their location relatively easily when working in a local region.

do you remember your coordinates? a plus code is easier to remember, shorter and is in a "canonical" form.

But does it overcome the significant problems OP highlighted?

If I can remember my plus address it doesn't do me much good when my neighbor exactly below me has the identical plus address.

Also, I would think you'd find a lot of people have trouble remembering:

> 8GC2CMXR+X6

Though, perhaps at times all you need to remember is:

> CMXR+X6

As I understand, lat/long is continuous, plus codes are discrete.

If I give you my lat/long, how many decimals do I use? Will you be able to tell me from my neighbor? What if someone moves in to the same house as me, what’s they’re lat/long distinct from mine?

> Is there anywhere in the world where it's used for postal delivery, or anything practical at all?

Found an example: "The postal services of Cape Verde were the first to support plus codes for mail delivery".