Re: The Great Year-2000 Hoax!

In article <54ltu5$gp3@bamboo.verinet.com>, Cathy Kipp <ckipp@bamboo.verinet.com> writes >In article Sundial Services <info@sundialservices.com> wrote: >> >>What John Q. Public does not realize is that we have been thinking about the >>Year 2000 since 1970 and before. We had to. Every case is obviously >>different but as a general rule I think it's entirely appropriate to say that >>the general issue of the 21st century is not catching the data processing >>industry particularly by surprise, and it's not coming to a head this year for >>any particular reason. > >As a person who entered into the industry in the mid 1980's fresh out of >college, I will tell you you are wrong. When I first started working >and saw the atrocious way dates were being handled in order to save >space, I mentioned and got various responses from the more senior staff >(as well as people outside the staff - including management) well into >the early/mid-1990's: > > 1) That's not my problem, I won't be here then > 2) That's a long ways off, worry about it then > 3) There are higher priorities > 4) We may be on a different system by then > Yes, most of the time management have their heads up their behinds.. >Fortunately, they are on a different system now, but the legacy system >with it's PL/1 programs and flat file data would have required a pretty >major kludge to have worked without being redesigned and rewritten. > >>Well, you never see a set of data without knowing a great deal about it. For > >Excuse me? You must live in a very special world. Maybe I'll know >what century the data was entered in, but I see data all the time which >I know nothing about except what I can derive from the table schemas. > >Regards, > >Cathy >------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Cathy Kipp E-mail: ckipp@verinet.com >Principal Consultant Fort Collins, Colorado, USA >Database Strategies, Inc. Phone: 1-970-226-0240 >Informix User Group of Colorado - President >International Informix User Group - Board of Directors >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > -- David Williams