🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <12649@maven.u.washington.edu> games@maven.u.washington.edu (Games Wizard) writes:
>There will be >>NO<< PARTY for software engineers on Jan 1 2000, because at 
>that point all of the old bad programmers will have to figure out how to fix
>all the programs with 89 instead of 1989 as dates in data.  For them
>at least the old milennia will end, and a new one ( a kinder gentler
>more user-friendly one ) will begin.

Ah, but you are forgetting that not everybody uses the last two digits of
the year!  Some systems, like Unix, the Mac, and DOS keep time relative to
an epoch (Midnight Jan 1, 1970 for Unix).  Not that the OS' internal
representation can prevent an application program from making the mistake
you describe...

Those systems will blow up at a later time, when the time quantum exceeds
what can be represented by an unsigned integer.  So far, sizeof(int) has
increased faster than time.

Some programmers who practice other unclean methods will also have problems
when the time exceeds a positive integer, and their time will become
negative.  For the most part, these problems are left for a future
generation of softwear engineers to work out.

>"and the master programmer spake :  Now my son, you are truly enlightened."

"There is always a better way."
		-- Thomas Edison

-- 
		Glen Overby	<overby@plains.nodak.edu>
	uunet!plains!overby (UUCP)  ncoverby@ndsuvax, overby@plains (Bitnet)