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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Software Engineering News Brief
Date: 1996/11/07
Message-ID: <dewar.847369058@merv>#1/1
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references: <55nqea$32a@news2.delphi.com> <3280BAFA.1B2F@email.mot.com>
organization: New York University
newsgroups: 
 comp.lang.ada,comp.sw.components,comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.edu
Date: 1996-11-07T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


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 :-)