Re: ascii dates

[dana@dtn.com]

>Trying to make a case for four-digit dates in the 1950s,
>60s, even 70s, would have been like trying to make a case
>for strong crypto in email, or for wisely chosen
>passphrases -- completely irrelevant.

Hmmm, good point.  Wonder why we never heard of the ZIP+4 crisis?  Must
have been a secret govt coverup.  :-)

>What was BCD?
Really, some things are best left in the past.... :-)
(Binary Coded Decimal, came out of IBM (As most decent stuff did (EBCDIC
not withstanding) )as I recall.)

>There _were_ no standards for
>databases because there _were_ no fucking "databases,"
>shitbrain!

Would SQL even be considered a "database standard"?
Being as it is simply a standard query language based on IBM's SEQUEL
(Structured English QUEry Language)?  Seems like calling C an OS standard.

>You were replying to dana, who wrote:

>> Ehem.  Nice try, but it was caused by 2k computers,
>> 10M harddrives (or no harddrive), and...

>Dana, you're in better shape than Sunder or vw, but even
>your examples are based on fairly recent technology.

Sorry, I'm a recent kinda guy (Started on VIC-20 at home and IBM CS-1 (and
some ancient Honeywell and Unisys crap) at work (First system I actually
got to touch.  First year or so we did COBOL and FORTRAN on coding forms
which were sent to the punchers to do for us.))

>Nice try, but no such cost justification was ever done.
>If you were programming during the first 40 or so years of
>the data processing era, you never gave any thought to
>tying up two extra digits.
>There _were_ no calculations; there _was_ no discussion.

I didn't intend to show that there was one done, simply that NOT
representing the additional digits has saved LOTS of money, and this should
be considered before one slams "Bad Programmers".

>The hardware was able to do arithmetic
>with packed decimal values. Binary was difficult or
>impossible, always a pain in the ass.

What you don't like one's complement, etc?  :-)

>"Hard drives?" How about the 80MB and 300MB removable
>platter drives of the late 1970s and into the 1980s?
>How about $20,000 for the smaller one and $30,000 for
>the larger one? For perspective, those numbers would
>be about $44,000 and $66,000 in 1998 dollars.

And the earie scream of heads bouncing off platters!  :-)

>8-level tape came later, in the late 1960s, and
>came to be used in TWX machines and computers.

Also cool since they do not represent an "Electrical connection" to
security twits.  Many a "Secure gateway" were built with old tape punchers
and readers.  he he he

>Punched cards
>80 columns, 12 bits per column. Used for quite
>a time as the _primary_ data medium. Updates
>were done by reading an input deck, modifying
>the data, and punching a new output deck. The
>input deck would be thrown away after the
>output was seen to be good.

Nothing worse then the unfortunate programmer who was too lazy to use CSN's
on their decks and the reader pucked them out across the floor.  (Speaking
as a former lazy programmer who spent about 30 hours once reorganizing a
deck.)

>Floppy jukeboxs
>New stuff.

Late 70's (Not new for me) :-)

>Think of writing numeric
>code by hand, of calculating the execution time,
>figuring the locations on the track of the instruction
>and its operands. Each instruction actually pointed to
>the next instruction -- the only way to get reasonably
>fast program execution. No assembler. No compiler.

Whatever happened to op code timing tables?  Used to come as part of system
documentation.  Probably got replaced by the section on using the mouse to
press "Start".

>Oh yes... the machine was 100% vacuum tubes, with a
>MTBF of, oh, weeks, no more than a few months.

Sure, but you did not need a heater in the computer room.

>And they sit here in P-500 Land with integrated
>development environments and virtually no knowledge
>of _any_ of the underlying hardware

Why would you need that?  You can always use the API?  :-)

>and _whine_ about how the previous couple of generations got
>them here.

That is the Gen X goatee detector!


Dan Anderson