From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 10db24,37e6dbf5e31f6da0 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public X-Google-Thread: ff6c8,37e6dbf5e31f6da0 X-Google-Attributes: gidff6c8,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,37e6dbf5e31f6da0 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,37e6dbf5e31f6da0 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,37e6dbf5e31f6da0 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public From: rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Robert Rodgers) Subject: Re: Software Engineering News Brief Date: 1996/11/18 Message-ID: <3290e3b8.3406981@news.wam.umd.edu>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 197314958 references: <55nqea$32a@news2.delphi.com> <3280BAFA.1B2F@email.mot.com> <563tle$cu7$1@shade.twinsun.com> <56lvss$r82@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> <01bbd490$356f8220$686700cf@ljelmore.montana> <1996Nov18.091831.1@eisner> organization: University of Maryland, College Park, MD newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.sw.components,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.edu Date: 1996-11-18T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen) wrote: >In article <01bbd490$356f8220$686700cf@ljelmore.montana>, "Larry J. Elmore" writes: >> I agree that it's unnecessary for Ada to directly support dates rtanging >> over thousands of years, but IMHO the 1900-2099 A.D. limit is just too >> small. For example, any program dealing with birthdates of people (and I'm >> thinking mainly in the health care field right now where many patients are >> elderly), many people alive today were born before 1900. I don't see why you wouldn't want to use, say, a 128bit dating system. This would allow indexing the contents of the filesystem by date -- including the geological record, and all of human history. For a huge database system (say, of the sort that futurists like to talk about for ~50 to ~100 years from now) this would be quite useful (especially since timestamp on files has pretty much become useless). The compiler could catch whacky dates at compile time -- and allow their use if desired. There is no reason whatsoever to limit the language proper to a specific date period. rsr www.wam.umd.edu/~rsrodger b a l a n c e - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Reasonable is expecting excellence from those who expect it from you.