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OH MY GAWD! NOT AGAIN!

qbawl
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OH MY GAWD! NOT AGAIN!

#26

Post by qbawl »

noblepa wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 11:05 am
qbawl wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 9:23 am
noblepa wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 8:34 am

I think that the bigger problem is all the time stamps that are stored in databases and other files in 32 bit form. That was one of the biggest issues in Y2K. How do you find and change all those stored dates?
I was a mainframe (IBM370) systems programmer working for an insurance / financial institution at Y2K though my title was Senior Technical Analyst (remember this, it becomes important) and as you say a big problem was finding and changing all the 2 character dates both in the progs and the DBs.
Earlier in my career I had been on the other side of the house and written programs in COBOl and 360 Assembler language for many years. A massive effort was initiated to find and fix all the deficient code. (it always amuses me when folks say "Y2K was no big deal" that's only true because a whole bunch of peeps put in long hours working their collective asses off to "make it so") as a sys prog my groups task was less arduous than for those writing the business code, but our group "Tech Group" was assigned to 'Help
those folks' deal with the mess (by this time there were hardly any assm lang programmers over there but still a whole bunch of code.) so the 'Tech Group' ended up putting in more time and effort than any other team as "Helpers". Well Y2K came and went and management was ecstatic. They decided to give a really nice bonus to all involved. But they only wanted the workers and not the bosses to benefit. Solution: the bonus went to anyone with the word programmer in their title!
Your background and Y2K experience sounds a lot like mine. I began my career writing 360 assembler language programs. I still would love to get a job doing that, but nobody is hiring that particular skill anymore.

I never quite got the hang of the BXLE instruction though. (You are a real 360 assembler programmer if you get the reference).
THERE IS A POP ONLINE Form A22-6821-0 File No. S360-01
qbawl
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OH MY GAWD! NOT AGAIN!

#27

Post by qbawl »

Somewhere around here I have a sheet of code translations from my days operating 1401s and 7074s with gems like these:

BBI Branch on Blinking Indicator
HCF. Halt and Catch Fire
RI. Read Incorrect
HEP. Halt and Execute Programmer

. . .
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noblepa
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OH MY GAWD! NOT AGAIN!

#28

Post by noblepa »

keith wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 6:30 pm
Sam the Centipede wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 6:04 pm Wikipedia has a page listing many possible (for some value of possible) computer date issues, for various operating and hardware systems. Quite a few! Some from issues such as BCD encoding, some which might occur in 1978 years as there is/was apparently some debate about whether 4000 should be a leap year.

Finding the page is left as an exercise for the interested reader.
4000 is divisible buy 4 so it should be a leap year, but
4000 iis divisible by 100 so it should not be a leap year, but
4000 is divisible by 1000 so it IS a leap year.

No, ok, wait. 2000 was not a leap year, so... I've forgotten how it works, and I had to teach it to the Germans in Waldorf back in the day.
Close.

4000 is divisible buy 4 so it should be a leap year, but
4000 is divisible by 100 so it should not be a leap year, but
4000 is divisible by 400 so it IS a leap year.

That is why the year 2000 was a leap year, but 2100 will not be. Nor was 1900. 2200 and 2300 will not be leap years, but 2400 will be, assuming that anyone is still using the Gregorian calendar.
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noblepa
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#29

Post by noblepa »

qbawl wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 11:40 am
noblepa wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 11:05 am
qbawl wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 9:23 am
I was a mainframe (IBM370) systems programmer working for an insurance / financial institution at Y2K though my title was Senior Technical Analyst (remember this, it becomes important) and as you say a big problem was finding and changing all the 2 character dates both in the progs and the DBs.
Earlier in my career I had been on the other side of the house and written programs in COBOl and 360 Assembler language for many years. A massive effort was initiated to find and fix all the deficient code. (it always amuses me when folks say "Y2K was no big deal" that's only true because a whole bunch of peeps put in long hours working their collective asses off to "make it so") as a sys prog my groups task was less arduous than for those writing the business code, but our group "Tech Group" was assigned to 'Help
those folks' deal with the mess (by this time there were hardly any assm lang programmers over there but still a whole bunch of code.) so the 'Tech Group' ended up putting in more time and effort than any other team as "Helpers". Well Y2K came and went and management was ecstatic. They decided to give a really nice bonus to all involved. But they only wanted the workers and not the bosses to benefit. Solution: the bonus went to anyone with the word programmer in their title!
Your background and Y2K experience sounds a lot like mine. I began my career writing 360 assembler language programs. I still would love to get a job doing that, but nobody is hiring that particular skill anymore.

I never quite got the hang of the BXLE instruction though. (You are a real 360 assembler programmer if you get the reference).
THERE IS A POP ONLINE Form A22-6821-0 File No. S360-01
I read the POP manual many times, and I still could not quite wrap my mind around that instruction, or its cousins, BXH and BXL. Not sure why. Then again, I never found a reason to use them.
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keith
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OH MY GAWD! NOT AGAIN!

#30

Post by keith »

qbawl wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 11:54 am Somewhere around here I have a sheet of code translations from my days operating 1401s and 7074s with gems like these:

BBI Branch on Blinking Indicator
HCF. Halt and Catch Fire
RI. Read Incorrect
HEP. Halt and Execute Programmer

. . .
That list was in the appendix of some asm textbook or other. I dont think i have anymore.
Has everybody heard about the bird?
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noblepa
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#31

Post by noblepa »

Somewhere at home, I have a copy of The Devil's DP Dictionary which has such useful definitions as:

Recursive: see Recursive

Endless loop: see loop, endless

Loop, endless: see endless loop

Actually, those definitions do a pretty good job of explaining those computer terms.
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keith
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#32

Post by keith »

noblepa wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 3:08 pm
I read the POP manual many times, and I still could not quite wrap my mind around that instruction, or its cousins, BXH and BXL. Not sure why. Then again, I never found a reason to use them.
Branch on Index instructions aren't all that hard to understand, but they aren't that overwhelmingly advantageous for very many use cases.

They're kinda like a computed Go-To in ForTran.
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keith
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#33

Post by keith »

noblepa wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 3:05 pm
Close.

4000 is divisible buy 4 so it should be a leap year, but
4000 is divisible by 100 so it should not be a leap year, but
4000 is divisible by 400 so it IS a leap year.

That is why the year 2000 was a leap year, but 2100 will not be. Nor was 1900. 2200 and 2300 will not be leap years, but 2400 will be, assuming that anyone is still using the Gregorian calendar.
Oh, yeah, that's the way it goes.

SAP HR routines had it wrong in 1999, and I kept submitting code to Waldorf (I thought) to fix it, but they kept deciding they knew better and kept sending patches that just made it worse. After the third go-around they adopted my code.

Turns out that the HR module I was working with wasn't from Germany though. it was American. I don't know if it was the American team that was screwing it up, or the onsite German 'watchdog' team.
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keith
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#34

Post by keith »

Joshua Freaking Hosephat!

Is this yet another computer freaking date error?

I am building an excell spreadsheet, OK

Column A is an integer from 1 to 365 (days of the year)
Column B is the date corresponding to that day number starting at Jan 1, 2022. Formatted as dd/mm because I don't care about the year
Column C is the month name that the day is in. Formula is =TEXT(A1,"mmmm") - works perfectly until 31 December which is shown as January.

WTF????
Edit: Oh never mind for crying out loud.

I typed the formula for Jan 1 as =TEXT(A2,"mmmm") and then copied it down the column.

Absolutely rookie 'off by one' error. Sheesh!
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Gupwalla
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#35

Post by Gupwalla »

You are forgiven. It is always tomorrow in Melbourne anyway, so your whole life is based around an off by one calendar.
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Foggy
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#36

Post by Foggy »

Wait, that happens to other people? :shock:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Sam the Centipede
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#37

Post by Sam the Centipede »

Foggy wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 6:08 am Wait, that happens to other people? :shock:
Yes, but to one fewer than you expect.
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