Re: Software Engineering News Brief

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <32805050.417820504@news>, davidb@datalytics.com (David Bradley) writes:
> seic@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us (Software Engineering News) wrote:
> 
>>Ada applications aren't likely to fail any time between now and January 1, 
>>2000, or beyond, for the simple reason that Ada doesn't let programmers 
>>represent dates in two-digit shorthand.
> 
> Seems rather restrictive.  So you're saying that if I decide to code
> up a julean type date and use only the last two digits of the year,
> that's impossible to do in Ada?  So as a user, I have to always type
> the four digit year?  This is unecessary in most cases.  As the first
> two digits can be determined with some intelligent logic.

No, Ada, like many other environments tries to lead one in the
direction of avoiding the century problem, but one can always
choose not to follow.  As a matter of fact, one can even encode
years using only a single digit, but that is more hazardous as
there is increased chance of being at the same employer when
everything falls apart.

Larry Kilgallen