>>The guy that
invented area codes and two digit dates must have moved onto
harddrives<g>.
For all of you younger whippersnappers, let me tell you that
not only did it make good sense at the time but we, those
of us who were developing software in the sixties, seventies,
and eighties, and even the early nineties, would have got
our butts fired for wasting resources anticipating
problems that would "never come up in the lifetime of
this application." I am quoting many managers I have
heard personally in unison.
Though I had reservations, I cannot honestly say I disagreed
with them. My honest reservations were no where near strong
enough to make a lot of exceptions in my own code. Why?
Because I never believed these applications would survive.
Short sighted? Well, in 20-20 hindsight, maybe. In foresight?
Poop. Actually, the vast majority of these applications
have NOT survived. It's not at all clear to me that the
y2k costs we are now experiencing would exceed the costs
of avoiding it. In fact, I doubt it. Current pundits
have no effing idea of the expense of a few bytes per
record even 10 or 15 years ago, much less 30.
This is why I play Doom while you guys are cloning OSs.
Or partly. I admit I've cloned OSs out the wazoo while
putting up my new PCs. And I observed that I could
have installed the whole damn thing from scratch 20
times over in the time I have spent covering my backside.
Same trade off. Figure your costs. Life's uncertain,
so you're going to miss it. That's what plans B, C,
D, and E are for.
End of old fart's diatribe. |
