Not unless you can prove it! I'm a firm believer that Ada is a great
language, but I don't think that just using Ada would have prevented the
Y2K situation. It's certainly to late to rewrite everything in Ada in
any case.

The Calendar package provides for a 4 digits date (1901-2099), but it
does not disallow designers from using a two digit date. Calendar is
great but some people may choose to define their own definition of time
and nothing in Ada, or any other language, could prevent that from
failing at a predetermined point. That is not a failure of the language,
it is a failure of the designer to consider how the program will be
used.

Caledar.year_number is good until 2099, then what? We've got 100 years
to figure that one out. Y2k is only a problem because it was
"discovered", for lack of a better word, late in the game. We've learned
that we need to look ahead and write code that won't fail at a
predetermined date/time.

In summary, if someone wants to make a public statement that Ada would
have prevented the Y2K problem, they'd better be damn sure that there's
no way to prove otherwise. IMHO, making that announcement and having
someone prove it wrong would be catastrophic.

My $0.02

John T Apa                              [log in to unmask]
L-3 CSW                                 (801) 594-3382
PO Box 16850                            Fax: (801) 594-2195
640 North 2200 West                     Salt Lake City, UT. 84116-0850



>-----Original Message-----
>From:  Chad Bremmon [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent:  Monday, March 08, 1999 10:43 AM
>To:    [log in to unmask]
>Subject:       What about a press release
>
>It might make sense, and I'm not really sure who should do it, but a good
>press
>release about how using Ada can prevent the Y2K problem might be worthwhile.
>. .
>at least it might get those in middle management to know that Ada is still
>around.  Does that sound like a good idea?
>
>Chad