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Strategies & Market Trends : Bob Brinker: Market Savant & Radio Host

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To: Trebor who wrote (4824)5/4/1998 1:02:00 AM
From: Ken Brown  Read Replies (2) of 42834
 
>> don't blame the lowly software engineer for this problem.<<

I'd like to qualify that statement a little. Don't ENTIRELY blame the lowly software engineers.

I started programming about 2 years after that caller said he did, so we're in the same generation, more or less. I can remember the Y2K issue coming up as long ago as the early 80s. We couldn't afford the luxury of storing the century, of course. But it took only a little extra code (relatively cheap compared to storage of a lot of dates) to ensure that the program would work for 100 years: If the date you're comparing is < the current year, you assume it's in the next century.

I also recall having to program for leap year 2000 - another special case. In this case, though, I believe it's an exception to the exception, so it IS a leap year.

The point being, while not all code could be corrected for Y2K problems when written, the careful programmer could often do something about it, IF they chose to. The blame goes to those who chose not to worry about it, since it's "so far off".

Ken
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