Re: Bad programs die quick; Bad data structures die hard.

From: Alain LaBonté  (alb@iquebec.com)
Date: Tue Mar 19 2002 - 18:03:14 EST


A 21:39 2002-03-19 +0000, Michael Everson a écrit :
>At 06:32 +0900 2002-03-20, Dan Kogai wrote:
>>Y2K is a good example. It was not program's bug but that of data
>>representation.
>
>I don't understand why people are writing '02 and the like. Were they not
>paying attention?

[Alain] Writing it in text is not a problem if context is known.
Impressionists in the XIXth Century, for example, already signed their
paintings with a format such as « Claude Monet 89 »(we know it was 1889).

    Not indicating the truncated information in data files used by dumb
programs which can be exposed to a different context is another story.
Losing information in data files -- whatever the nature of the data -- is
always a problem over time...

Alain LaBonté
Québec



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Mar 19 2002 - 18:53:45 EST