CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending April 10, 1998(Y2k Problems)

CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending April 10, 1998(Y2k Problems)

[Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.]

To: CFCSEIC, Readers of Comp.Lang.Ada, and Team-Ada
From: Bob Leif, Ph.D.

Below are described the necessity for paying premium salaries "to attract
and retain programmers familiar with COBOL and FORTRAN". This generates the
question, Has anyone found a Y2k, year 2000, problem in Ada? It would be of
significant use to obtain statistics on the existence of these problems.
Even if no Y2k problems are found in Ada, there still will be costs because
it is prudent to check for them.

My second question is, If significant year Y2k problems are found in a
project written in a language other than Ada during the Ada mandate period,
is DoD taking any action to hold anyone responsible for these added costs?
And lastly, Did any of the software vendors on these projects make any
warranty expressly or implied that the language selected was appropriate
for the project?

CFCSEIC published in Comp.Lang.Ada:
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 "OPM CHANGES RULES TO ATTRACT AND RETAIN Y2K PROGRAMMERS

Topic:  Y2k

According to an article in the Apr. 6 edition of Federal Computer Week,
the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has announced that it would let
agencies supplement the salaries of programmers working on Y2k projects, and
waive rules that limit salaries of retired programmers who return to
government work.  Programmers who are doing work that is considered
necessary to avert threats to life or property, including monetary
losses, would be eligible for "premium pay".  Agencies who obtain OPM
permission would be able to hire back retirees for programming jobs at
full pay.  OPM's new policy is designed to attract and retain programmers
familiar with COBOL and FORTRAN.  According to a Senate Governmental
Affairs Committee aide, lawmakers are hoping that the agencies will use
the "flexibilities" offered by the new policy to help address the Y2k
problem.  Olga Grkavac, a Sr. V.P. with the Information Technology
Association of America's System Integration Division, believes that OPM's
decision sends "a powerful message that a potential emergency is at
hand", but feels "this move may be too little too late."  According to
OPM, the new policy for hiring retirees applies only to retired civilian
workers or regular military officers, not to military enlisted personnel
or reserve officers."
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Re: CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending April 10, 1998(Y2k Problems)

[Markus Kuhn]

Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. wrote:
> Has anyone found a Y2k, year 2000, problem in Ada?

No, but there is a built-in Year-2100 problem in Ada.Calendar, and
I think it is urgent time that we immediately start Year 2100
awareness campaigns, because there might still be some ignorant
journalist out there who hasn't yet been made fully aware of
how uttery bad things really will be in 2100. Not to forget
the Year-2038 collapse of the global economy due to the Unix
time_t overflow after we barely survived the 2028 near-miss
of asteroid 1997XF11!!! God help us all!!!!!

Argl ... if people only started to look at real software engineering
problems instead of all this Y2K paranoia. The problem is not that
some computers will cause some minor inconvenience because of the
date overflow, the real problem that should be addressed is that
we have become so dependent of systems that we can't maintain any
more! Hiring old COBOL programmers is in no way going to fix this
underlying problem! On the contrary, it is a waste of money that
only delays the solution of the real problem: Systems that cannot
be maintained by current staff should be sent to the bitgraveyard and
replaced by maintainable modern ones asap.

Yes, my Panasonic video recorder will also show the wrong day of the
week starting 2000-01-01, and no, I still love it and I will still be
able to use it and not panic, and the fix will not be an overpaid
COBOL programming fossil, it will not even be a firmware update,
but some adhesive tape and a piece of paper with a translation table
for the quite flexible user.

Markus, not yet Ph.D.

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Security Group, Computer Lab, Cambridge University, UK
email: mkuhn at acm.org,  home page: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>