Re: Y2K Comments

["Steven J. Owens" <puff -at- NETCOM -dot- COM>]

Scott McClare writes:

> > From: Tracy Boyington [SMTP:tracy_boyington -at- OKVOTECH -dot- ORG]
> >
> >In that case, wouldn't faulty "instructions," such as "these
> >two numbers for the year always have a '19' in front of them"
> >be considered a bug? And if I'm wrong, what *is* the definition
> >of a bug?
>
> The instructions aren't faulty; it was a corner cut to save memory when
> every bit (no pun intended) was precious.

     This is correct.  It was a valid technique used when a powerful
computer had less than 16 kilobytes of memory.

> Those programmers simply never foresaw that their hack would
> continue this far into the future, where memory is abundant and
> cheap and those two extra bytes are insignificant.

     This is one of my pet peeves; the "y2K bug" was not caused by
engineering short-sightedness (though Scott's comments above are quite
inoffensive compared to some of the comments I've seen), it was caused
by MANAGEMENT shortsightedness.  I learned about the Y2K problem in my
first "official" computer programming class (IBM 360 assembler) in
1986!

     We've known about the issue for a long time.  Nothing was done
about it because of typical management short-term mentality, the
classic example of which was "Cut 40,000 employees and watch the
short-term profits soar (along with upper management's bonuses and
stock options).  Who cares what happens in 5 or 10 years, we'll be
retired or off running some other company then!"

Steven J. Owens
puff -at- netcom -dot- com

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=