|
November 20, 1998/ 1 Kislev 5759, Vol. 51, No. 9
Letters to the Editor11/20/1998
Arrogance is not cause of Y2K bugEditor:This letter is in response to the commentary, headlined "Is Year 2000 bug a modern-day Tower of Babel?" by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, that appeared in your Oct. 30 issue. In this article, Rabbi Waskow displayed the propensity of some clergymen to discuss topics they know absolutely nothing about. I am a retired computer engineer who entered the field with Remington Rand UNIVAC in 1951 and spent the next 31 years designing, building and programming digital computers, so the circumstances that gave rise to the so-called Y2K problem are part of my personal experience. The problem arose not because of man's arrogance, but because memory space in the early machines was expensive, and computer operating speeds were slow. Thus, we did everything possible to reduce the amount of memory utilized by the programs, and their running time. This included using two digits instead of four to represent the year in date calculations. No one dreamed that programs written in the '50s and '60s would still be in use at the end of the century. Furthermore, these early programs consisted of at most a few hundred lines of code, so that segments of computation within them are relatively easy to locate. Today's programs, which may incorporate some of these early programs, may have millions of lines of code, making it more difficult and tedious to locate specific computation segments. Thus, the solution to the Y2K problem involves no metaphysics, just persistent and systematic searching for the date computations. This effort is going on now, and I want to reassure Rabbi Waskow that the world will not come to an end in the year 2000. I would like to enlighten Rabbi Waskow on one other point. There are a number of universal languages in use today, e.g., COBOL, PL/1, C++, all associated with computers. Men developed these artificial languages to make it easier and more efficient to convey information. These languages deliberately separate the information-bearing function of natural languages from its emotional content. Perhaps one can attribute to God the source of the talent men had to recognize these two features of language and separate them so as to better convey information. Norman P. Yarosh Scottsdale |
