Add new comment

Georgis (not verified)

1 month 2 weeks ago

Time is a purely human concept.
Regarding the Y2K computer apocalypse that wasn't - a major reason was that a lot of software was patched or completely re-written in time. I know, I was in that business. A co-worker began insisting - in the early 90s - that planned upgrades to our primary business applications (think - payroll) should include 4 digits for the year. More and more business caught on throughout the 90s. Time had some nerve calling it "a ludicrously shortsighted shortcut" to use 2 digits. For a long time, computer memory really was expensive, and programmers prided themselves on inventing clever shortcuts, for this and many other details that non-programmers never think about. And how many of Time's employees wrote out all 4 digits of the year when drafting memos or writing notes for themselves? We all knew what century it was, who needed the constant reminder? Many companies (including ours) had Y2K New Year's Eve shifts of programmers on call, in case we had missed one and something DID break. There were not ZERO incidents, just few enough that they didn't get much attention - and all the pre-work was ignored or ridiculed.
Now that we are well into this century, many applications (new or upgrades) are reverting to 2 digit years, out of laziness, not necessity. I personally had an unsuccessful argument on the phone with an automated billing system in a hospital that could not comprehend, in 2018, that my mother had been born in 1918. The possibility that a human might live to be 100 years old was not anticipated.
Daylight Savings Time is another programming nightmare. I own a lot of functioning electronics that were programmed to do DST shifts according to the "old" schedule, i.e., 2 roughly 6-month periods. I have to manually re-set them like we used to do before someone figured out a clever algorithm for a computer to use (how do you expect a machine to recognize the 2nd Sunday in April?), along with all the devices that aren't important enough to have to know the exact time (ovens, e.g.). A growing number of people want to do away with the semi-annual time shifts anyway; can't wait to see what havoc THAT wreaks on all the automated systems.

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Comment HTML

  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.