Running Lite With No OverByte
- To: Multiple recipients of list <i*@rt66.com>
- Subject: Running Lite With No OverByte
- From: m*@tricities.net (Mike Lowe)
- Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 12:33:28 -0700 (MST)
I have been (metaphorically) rubbing my hands in glee, in respect to the
Millennium Bug, the two digit encoding of year in computer programs and
data. I am reaping the benefit of my early-days byte parsimony by part time
data base repair consulting.
However, I personally, have been bitten savagely by the 'Bug' as I coded
the beginnings of my pedigree database program when 16K was a vastly huge
storage space. In short, my pedigree data is coded with two digit dates as
per the following example: [Stanley H. White, Sturtevant 19]
Each time that I 'grandfathered' the data to a new platform, the program
date coding remained the same thru sloth, inertia, and a naif belief that
no one could possibly live to be old enough to witness the millennium. Woe,
woe!
I am now swotting over a grep macro that will (hopefully?!?) deal with the
date and not savage seedling numbers such as 'Gibson 36,' Sass 21 and so
forth.
Moral: When crafting an iris data structure, think ahead, be prodigal with
hardware and software resources. What looks like a spendthrift waste of
resources now, will be a trivial 'drop in the bucket' in the all too near
future.
Best regards,
Mike, mikelowe@tricities.net -- http://www.tricities.net/~mikelowe/
Sadder, but just as dumb, in South Central Virginia, USA
