Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 07:39:29 -0700 (PDT) From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: proposal to not change time_t Message-ID: <199808211439.HAA04215@pau-amma.whistle.com> In-Reply-To: <199808202213.PAA28422@usr04.primenet.com>
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>From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> >Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 22:13:48 +0000 (GMT) >> > If time_t were 48 bits, when would we be running into *that* limit? >> In about four million years. I think all of us will probably have to >> newfs our drives by then. :-) >In 40 years, none of the COBOL programs we write will still be running... Terry, Terry.... In Jean Sammet's paper from the first "History of Programming Languages" conference, entitled "The Early History of COBOL" (incorporated on pp. 199-243 of _History of Programming Languages_, which I keep at my desk), it is clear that the COBOL language was a result of the "Short-Range Committee" [from pp. 201 - 203]: ...Note that the mission of the Short-Range Committee (see Fig. 2) was to *explore* and "to recommend a short-range composite approach (good for at least the next year or two)." That paper is copyright 1981 (Association for Computing Machinery), and the excerpt quoted refers to activities occurring 28-29 May, 1959. That said, there are only a couple of programs I've designed that I subsequently implemented in COBOL (though assembly for the IBM s/3[679]0 comes uncomfortably close, sometimes :-}), and I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to repeat that experience. david -- David Wolfskill UNIX System Administrator dhw@whistle.com voice: (650) 577-7158 pager: (650) 371-4621 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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