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Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:44:59 +0100
From: Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>
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Subject: Re: How do I write directly to a memory address?
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Date: 2011-03-02T19:45:00+01:00
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On 02.03.11 17:40, Hyman Rosen wrote:
> On 3/2/2011 11:25 AM, Georg Bauhaus wrote:
>> A good (Ada) interface might try to provide a structured calendar
>> date type.  I doubt that such an interface will make the practical
>> programmer happy.
> 
> Why in the world not?

I was told that today's programmers have grown accustomed
to handling calendar dates as strings. Briefly. That they expect
to be able to pass these strings to calendar date handling libraries
and back. As strings.  And then just output whatever the library
computes.
Anything like Ada.Calendar is too bothersome, as important things
should be done with ease, with little writing, handled by good
libraries.  The good interface to the complexities of properly
dealing with time and date would be

- Pass a date string (that is automagically parsed by the library)
- Say add_days(2)
- Get the resulting date string

The permitted level of noise in date and time computations
would be something like

date_string = DOM_document.getElementById("date_of_birth").text()
if
  Calendar.get_month(date_string) = Calendar.current_month()
then
   ...


> Also, I find it difficult to envision the circumstances under which
> a program must deal with all the possible ways in which a date can
> be written as a string, so the leniency or peculiarity of MySQL ought
> not to cause practical difficulties.

The difficulty is the silent bugs introduced when some subsystem of
a program produces "legacy calendar date" strings.  They tend to be
of some non-standard form, one that is not compatible with MySQL's
expectations, but that MySQL does not reject. You might then
notice the effects when it is too late.