Orchid XP v7 nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/11/11 17:06:
> Brandon S. Allbery wrote:
> 

> Brent Yorgey wrote:
> 
>  > *I* would stop you.  Friends don't let friends write in COBOL.
> 
> 
> That last made me physically laugh out loud!

COBOL, maybe the only computer language where the internal representation for 
numbers is a formated string!
6 May 1960 needed all the space for the longest month name.
06/05/1960 needed 10 bytes to store, but 06/05/60 needed "only" 8: enter the Y2K 
bug...
$000,000,730.75 needed 15 bytes.
It would have been so much simpler to store all numbers and dates as binary, 
with input/output formating filters...
The peoples who created that must have been crazy! At the time, RAM and storage 
where at a premium, and you waste precious memory to store EVERYTHING as 
strings... Not to mention that doing arithmetics on strings is prety slow.

The problem comes from the fact that the developing team was headed by a team of 
administrators, acountants and actuaries, not programers nor anybody with any 
computer knowlege.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------

Did you know that Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

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