Re: Software Engineering News Brief

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Tom Reid says

"Anyone know why they didn't make it a span of 255 years and not waste
digits?"

First, there is nothing special about 255 years, since typically
representations of time don
't work that way in any case (e.g. a typical representation of time is
duration wrt some reference point).

Second, since time is a private type, it is unlikely that any Ada programs
will in fact have a 2100 problem which cannot be trivially corrected
(no doubt on the 512-bit machines of the day, large ranges will not be
a problem).

Third, the range given has one nice characteristic, no special handling of
leap years is needed (2100 is not a leap year).
I will guess in fact that the issue in 2100 will precisely be problems
on Feb 29th :-)