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: 103376,92471489ebbc99c6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Al Christians Subject: Re: Y2K Issues Date: 1998/11/06 Message-ID: <3643F872.DD14E00@easystreet.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 409291776 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <362B53A3.64E266AB@res.raytheon.com> <362B8D2F.802F42E6@lmco.com> <710nnc$jop@felix.seas.gwu.edu> <713nvs$cv8$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <71acr3$do4$1@husk.cso.niu.edu> <363E5AAC.E2F0AB7D@flinet.com> <71sbsc$5q5$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <720n9r$gk9$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: news6.ispnews.com 910423571 206.103.56.69 (Sat, 07 Nov 1998 02:26:11 EDT) Organization: Trillium Resources Corporation MIME-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 07 Nov 1998 02:26:11 EDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-11-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: dewarr@my-dejanews.com wrote: > > Twenty years = 1978, and of course we agree that people > were aware of Y2K then, indeed my post that started this > thread noted that. > > But Robert Eachus claimed ten years earlier (late 60's), > and that I find dubious. > I've been doing a little informal research on my bookshelf to see what level of awareness of y2k problems was in times past and what a reasonably literate software developer would have seen. Here's some of what I've found: 1. A good late 1980's Cobol text has examples with 2-digit year fields. 2. Cobol's CURRENT-DATE returned 2-digit year through Cobol 85. Even somebody who knew how bad this was might still use 2-digit years in their code, because that was the standard way, and the standard way would be compatible with the anticipated standard fix that has never arrived. 3. A 1993 book on user interface screen design has 2-digit year fields in the example screens, and gives results showing how research finds longer data fields produce much higher data entry error rates -- no mention of y2k problems. (I know of several very large systems written 20 or more years ago with file formats and processing algorithms that accomodate y2k fine, but that are rendered worthless by y2k because the screens and I/O routines are non-compliant) 4. Yourdon and Constantine's _Structured_Design_, a very influential work circa 1978, includes a lengthy example with data dictionary entries showing 6-digit date fields. Curiously, Yourdon is now one of the authors of books telling how to handle the problem. Al