Re: Y2K39

This reminds me of a blog post I read some time ago, but have seen links to it floating around. An entertaining read at least.

http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

Mark Murphy
STAR BASE Consulting, Inc.
mmurphy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Buck Calabro <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: -----
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Buck Calabro <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: 04/23/2015 09:48AM
Subject: Re: Y2K39

On 4/22/2015 11:22 PM, John Yeung wrote:

So, to address one of Dan's questions, about sliding the window, even
if IBM provided a system setting for this, it wouldn't make a
difference at some shops. Our Y2K problem had absolutely zero to do
with anything provided by IBM. It had everything to do with
shortsighted database design and application logic.

My one and only contribution to this thread is to remind people that
what is 'short-sighted' in 2015 was deliberate and intelligent in 1975.
No one in their right mind would have asked a keypuncher to punch two
redundant digits (1 and 9) in front of every year. That is an actual,
measurable expense and an actual, measurable source of keypunch errors
that can be avoided altogether by using the 'natural' 2 digit year
representation.

Having established that there was an actual reason for recording only 2
digits, it is not much of of a meander down the cow path [1] to what we
have to deal with today:

We now have a
hodgepodge of date logic throughout our system.

At some point I realised that this is the natural state of software, and
that it's my job to accommodate change within that framework of old,
very old, really quite old, and someone who thought that nesting 22 IF
statements was a Good Idea. All I can say is that I am deeply thankful
for service programs.