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Subject:Re: Y2K Comments From:Deborah Ray <debray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 11 Jan 1999 06:30:33 -0700
At 03:36 PM 1/8/99 -0500, Scott McClare commented about Y2K:
>The instructions aren't faulty; it was a corner cut to save memory when
>every bit (no pun intended) was precious. 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.
Ummm, no. The problematic two-digit date system is actually less
efficient, memory and system resources-wise, than other alternatives
that were (and continue to be) available. The Y2K problem started
because of a combination of human factors: the desire for humans to
be able to read data formats directly, the choice to represent dates
as text (not numeric values), and the tendency of humans to truncate
dates to a two-digit format.
Check out "The Year 2000 Problem: Background and Opportunities for
Technical Communicators" in the upcoming issue of _Technical
Communication_ for more information.
Deborah
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Deborah S. Ray, RayComm, Inc. http://www.raycomm.com/ debray -at- raycomm -dot- com
*Award-winning author of several popular computer books
*Syndicated columnist: Rays on Computing
*Technology Department Editor, _Technical Communication_
