2K & "Obsolete" Code....

At 15:36 5/27/97 -0400, you wrote:
>telsci wrote:
>> 
>> The thing that's WRONG with this implementation is that we have spent time
>> and money working on a 50 year postponement of the problem.  Are we all
>> assuming the AS/400 will be obsolete by then?  
>
>Maybe not - but any source code you have from today that you would want
>to maintain with PDM probably would be obsolete (as would PDM?).   :-)

Don't count on code becoming obsolete!  That's hopw the industry got into
this 2K problem in the first place.  I ran into my first  system date
problem back in '74 with DEC's RSTS-E operating system release, a release
which would have crashed 6 months after  it was sent out because the system
date was based upon a set # of days since the first 11/xx series machine
was produced.

You CANNOT assume that ANY code will be obsolete and be safe. Code has a
tendancy to survive and reproduce (even if your original program is removed
and deleted, can you be CERTAIN that nobody cloned parts of it?

Remember, the FFA is still BUYING obsolete hardware to run it's ancient
flight control software.  And the IRS was (may still be) using IBM
calculator code written in the '50's....

Even one-shot file repair utility programs seem to live far longer than the
programmer ever expected, I've seen lots of systems with FIXxxx programs
which had become part of the "standard" toolset on the system.

All you do by postponing the problem, is increase the SIZE of the problem....

I've had customers within the past 2 years who absolutely refused to permit
new data structures to use date fields large enough to handle century ends,
in order to be consistant with the rest of their system (evidently they
want the whole shebang to go at once:)

((End soapbox))
Charles Barnard
Wizard of Odd
1451 East Mason St.
Greeen Bay, WI  54301-3330

voice 414 436 9009
fax   414 436 9010
net   wizodd@netnet.net
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