of a year, years, and half a year (was Re: (none))

[karl@grebyn.com (Karl Nyberg)]

In article <2007@munnari.oz.au> ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe) writes:
>In article <8909022213.AA06286@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu>, cdonalds@AJPO.SEI.CMU.EDU writes:
>:           The year  1990 marks  the start of a new decade and the end of 
>:           one in which  the Ada  language came  of age,  in  terms  of  use  
>:           and acceptability. What  better time  to reflect on the 
>:           experiences of Ada users  throughout that  time and  to look to 
>:           the future in the light of that experience.
>
>Ahem.  1990 is the LAST year of the decade 1981-1990.
>Just as 2000 will be the LAST year of this century and millenium,
>not the first year of the next.
>
>If ADA.people get such blatant off-by-one errors in their specs,
>can their code be any better?  [ponderous humour]

Ada is spelled thus.  What else don't you know? [imponderous humor]

According to Webster's New Collegiate, 8th Edition:

	decade : 1 : a group or set of 10 ; 2 : a period of 10 years ; ...
	millenium : 1 a period of 1000 years ; ...

No indication on the lower bound.  I'm surprised that C.hackers (of all
people) wouldn't start with 0-based counting (like their poor arrays, K&R,
1.6, p 20), making the current millenium from 1000 .. 1999, and the current
decade of the 1980s from 1980 .. 1989.  Then the year 1990 would indeed MARK
the end of the current decade (known as the eighties, as all the years are
of the form 198[0-9]) and begin the first year of the nineties.

I can't fathom what DECADE we would call the years 1981 - 1990 (inclusive),
but there's probably some name for it...

Of course, all this wonderful analysis gets blown away by the fact that the
year 1 BC is followed immediately by the year 1 AD (BCE, or whatever your
religious conviction allows you to say).  Suffer the discontinuities of this
concept of time (running from negative infinity to -1, followed by 1 to plus
infinity, again depending upon your religions conviction), make the first
decade of the current era have only 9 years, change the common meaning of
things like "the eighties", the "nineteenth century", there are dozens of
options.  And throw in the missing months during the calendar change, leap
years, leap seconds, add various timezones for the folks in Australia, ...

But I digress.  Maybe somebody can make this another Ada 9X language issue.
I just love having more language issues for 9X.  It'll give me something to
do this winter and spring!  :-)

-- Karl --

Disclaimer: Opinions (such as they might be!) expressed herein are mine, all
mine, and are not intended to be the official position of the Ada 9X
program, the Requirements Team (of which I am a member), or any other person
or organization, now living or dead.  Any similarities to events, current or
past are unintentional.