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From: Richard D Riehle <laoXhai@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Confusing language,
 was Re: Help help.. please.i am totaly new in     ada programing
Date: 1999/11/10
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Date: 1999-11-10T21:41:34+00:00
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In article <wcc90462gqw.fsf@world.std.com>,
	Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com> wrote:

Regarding my irrational harangue about Y2K,

>Still, you (and Robert Dewar) now blame it on deficiencies of COBOL,
>which is quite fair.  That's quite different from saying folks
>intelligently decided that 1999 was (practically) the end of time, and
>documented that fact.

True.  COBOL, as designed and popularly used was a contributor to the
problem.  Even so, we could have coded a four digit year using two
bytes of COMP-3 (packed decimal), or even four bytes of USAGE DISPLAY.
For some applications, we actually did that starting in the late 70's
because some applications required maturity dates that extended into
the next century.  

Frequently the constrolling factor was limitation of storage on the
various kinds of media being used.  One of my economics professors 
said, "Economics is the study of scarcity.  If nothing were scarce, 
there would be no need for economics."   Y2K originates in a kind of
economics.  Scarcity of resources such as bytes on a hard disk, primary
memory on a computer, the time it took to read four rows on a paper
tape instead of two, the fact that all the files would not fit on a
single magnetic tape backup if one used to much space, the tyranny of
the eighty column card, still present in the design of video displays
limited to eighty characters per line on a screen, and a host of other
factors contributed to this problem.  

I was responding, originally, to your use of the word, "sloppy" to 
describe the people who created the problem.  

Oh, and as a matter of fact, 1999 is the end of time.  :-)

Richard Riehle