Anthony Atkielski wrote:
From: "Keith Moore" <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
it often seems to be the case that if you design for
the long term, what you get back isn't deployable
in the near term because you've made the problem
too hard.
I dunno. I don't think that adding two more digits in the 1960s to year
fields would have really made any problems too hard.
Hard, no; expensive, yes. Consider a DMV system for a state with, oh, 10
million people; each person has a record with at least 3 dates (birth, license
expiration, and one registration date for each car). Using 4-digit years would
have required over 60MB more storage space. I don't know 1960s storage prices,
but I know that 60MB would have cost enough to be worth saving.
--
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|John Stracke | http://www.ecal.com |My opinions are my own.|
|Chief Scientist |=============================================|
|eCal Corp. |Anyone who has a conditioned response |
|francis(_at_)ecal(_dot_)com|immediately thinks of Pavlov. |
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