X-no-Archive:yes
Agreed. What good thing does the US government do well?

We have no lack of good, available standards (in spite of the joke about
standards being a wonderful thing, there are so many to choose from). All of
the ones I am familiar with required long dates when they were feasible, and
with plenty of time to adopt them. COBOL has been able to support long dates
since 1989; a decade to remediate the code should have been more than enough
(I often wonder what things would be like if companies did this instead of
downsizing MIS). In addition to standards, the ACM and other bodies have
published algorithms that could have served as a library for a form of 'code
reuse'. I am amazed by the underutilization of what could have been great
resources. Too many fancy themselves great code warriors, writing better
code than anyone else could, when they are merely doing a very poor job of
reinventing the wheel. Code reviews do wonders to disabuse coders of such
lofty self-opinions.

-----Original Message-----
From: Stan Sieler [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, September 03, 1999 4:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Y2K and Software Code

<snip>
I'd much rather have some kind of "visible source" requirement, which
would allow for peer review ... without the NSC requirement.

--
Stan Sieler                                          [log in to unmask]
                                         http://www.allegro.com/sieler/