A REVIEW OF THE THREAD: "DON'T Miss This Post!!! The Best Programmer Explanation Yet" Read it first. Look for it fairly close by -- just generated in the past couple days.

DEAR EVERYBODY:

Why am I posting when I said "Saranoya" a couple days ago? 'Cause it's 4 AM and I've got "y2k insomnia" again, that's why. Better I should sniff another dose of TB2000 crack in front of the tube here, than continue tossing and turning thinking about Assembly Language again (arrrrgh!), and system clocks (arrrghh x 2!)

The initial post on this thread has been the most exasperating to comment on in 2 1/2 yrs looking at y2k.

First I mistakenly overlooked the fact that Desertj98 had presented this story as a quote from somebody else. It was easy to do, because he/she(?) omitted some formatting that would have made it much clearer. Like bracketing the whole story with a beginning ############### and ending ################. And leaving 3 blank lines beginning and ending.

Is this nitpicking? Yes. Does it have revelance to y2k? Yes, because y2k is about fixing programs, and part of good programming is what's called 'good DOCUMENTATION.' And the essence of good documentation is writing your 'source' code in such a way that someone (including yourself) can come back weeks, months, years, and yes, unfortunately DECADES later, and TRACE THE LOGIC WITHOUT HAVING TO STAY AT THE KEYBOARD FOR 14 NITES IN A ROW.

But the plot thickens. Even with rotten documentation (usually in the 'REMARKS' column of your source code -- which is just 'margin notes' that the programmer makes to himself/herself about what he/she is trying to do with this particular section of the program) --- or worse, NO documention, i.e., NO comments in the 'REMARKS' column -- even then, there are many gifted programmers who DON'T NEED 14 NITES IN A ROW TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S GOING ON. These were called 'water walkers' in my day. A quick way to identify a water walker was to watch them do hexadecimal/octal/decimal conversions IN THEIR HEADS.

Yes, this kind of brain made mincemeat out of program sequences that made mincemeat out of the brains of mere mortals, like me. These are the 'Anita Spooners' of the world. And I can see now why Anita flames us Doomers. It's NOT out of maliciousness. Her problem is simply that she is too brilliant.

Now, wait a minute -- maybe that's the answer to this whole programming problem, which is all y2k is. With brilliance at this level -- haven't we got the PERSONNEL problem licked? Can't we just sic these geeks on to the remediation problem, fixing code with 'one hand tied behind their backs?'

Now this is what I discovered about The Thick Plot: -- back in the '70s when I was struggling with Assembly language (struggling because I AM TERRIBLE WITH NUMBERS. And this from the son of a theoretical mathematician.) I discovered that the geeks, because Assembly was not COMPLEX ENOUGH to give them a rush, ROSE TO THE CHALLENGE and invented languages such as FORTH (I spent a month at Humboldt College in N. California, my corpse twisting in the wind of abject confusion understanding almost nothing, except that it did seem a wonderfully EFFICIENT language.)

And in their fateful attraction to complexity they also invented the 'C' language, and then 'C+,' and then 'C++' -- doing things that could have been done in Assembly, using a 'library' of 'macros.' (Which is a whole other story.) And of course, in betw Forth and C dialects there were dozens of other obscure arcane languages dreamed up (and actually occasionally used to control something in the real world.)

So what is in the center of The Plot? Well, it WASN'T a plot -- the water walkers didn't do anything on purpose --they just did what brilliant people do naturally: they made their programs so complex and sophisticated that they ended up writing code that IS TOO COMPLEX AND SOPHISTICATED AND UNDOCUMENTED TO BE FIXED IN TIME, GIVEN THE FACT THAT THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH WATER WALKERS TO GO AROUND! Most of the code is being remediated by NORMAL people, like the typical COBOL programmer.

[COBOL programmers (Yes, of course, there ARE exceptions.) have never held a soldering iron in their hands, they have never debugged a system clock circuit. They can't make the connection between the hardware underneath the programs and the programs themselves. An Assembly programmer HAS to be able to this while writing his code.]

Second, I conveniently glossed over the fact that the 'assembly' language quoted WAS NO WAY assembly language. Clearly a 'higher level' language (Looks like a birthdefected BASIC -- PL/1 combo?)

But, third and much more crucial I also ignored that the poster had assigned the duty of RTC (real time clock) to what really is the function of the SYSTEM clock (Think of the latter as the analog to your body's heartbeat, 60 to 80 Hz -- kind of slow ain't it -- unless someone flames you every time you make a post. After some of the hits I've taken on the Colloidal Silver threads I think I'm up around 120 and still counting.)

[And I ignored that error in the face of having written all my apps in Assembly. And THAT was a giant step up from my initial contact with computers -- when I had to program in "0"s and "1"s ('machine' language.) Then I graduated to 'octal' and then to 'hexadecimal.' [Thank God I never toyed with 'EBSIDIC,' IBM's INTENTIONAL marketing ploy, to make everyone program on the only machines that understood EBSIDIC: yep, IBM mainframes.) All this is very difficult for someone barely comfortable with 'decimal' (which is what we all learned in kindergarten.)

So what's so important about this error of claiming LOW level, Assembly code is where calendar clocks are hidden, thus claiming that computer code, right down at its very neuronal synapse level, is faulted and will come crashing down on 1/1/00? What's wrong is that it gives the impression to non-computer literate readers of this forum that NOTHING WILL WORK ON 1/1/00 --- that ALL COMPUTER PROGRAMS will come to a screeching halt.

What's so bad about this egregious error is that it is SO bad. So bad, that it's an absolute no-brainer to punch a hole in its logic. And this gives the Pollys just the ammunition they are constantly looking for: proof that the gloomers are Know-nothings, technical boobs, sold a bill of goods, off in LaLaLand, all of them New Age touchy feely, emotionally labile, unstabe air heads.

THAT'S what's wrong with the initial post.

OK, everybody, take a deep breath. Now let's look at the other side of the ledger.

*****************************************

Why would a guy of my age, having been around the block or two and involved in a strange medley of occupations and pastimes over 73 years -- reading the initial post on the first go-round, overlook all those errors? (Well, it could be early Alzheimers, except that I've exhibited this kind of poor thinking since I was about 17 years old, or was it 17 months old?)

Here's why.

The poster, Ms. X, is wonderfully human. She talks about her life like I can understand her, and how she is looking at the human condition. She can talk in terms of human VALUES. She can discuss the morals, the ethics, maybe even the mystery of life on this planet, and in this Universe, and what it could do to our society and our world. She can reach out and make connections between all this AND the TECHNICAL WORLD that geeks are typically boxed into (And they could never remain boxed into if they weren't so damn BRILLIANT!) And she is a MOTHER. And she gave a really good intro lesson on Computer Programming (the technical errors aside) to Newbies.

How come she could do it? Well I'm reminded of something I used to repeat to myself from time to time while programming, when I'd be confronted with my addiction to the maddening profession, maybe after having finally pounced on a malicious bug that had previously escaped my disassembler, my debugger, my trapper, my tracer for umpteen hours, and then finally found it at 3 AM, after two previous 3 AM stands. I would say to myself: "Hey I know why I sit here, a prisoner of my keyboard, in the face of such repeated self-inflicted pain ----- when my wife is content to remain downstairs in the living room playing with our little son. It's because Wifey has already deeply participated in a miracle far beyond anything I'll ever be able to do with my little box with blinking lights and front panel machine code switches. But I'm still trying to play catchup. Still trying to do what only God can do: CREATE A LIVING THING.

Yep, when it came down to it, I realized that the addiction to programming is my completely irrational delusion, that if I tried hard enough, I would be able to convert this inanimate glomp of wires, switches, IC's, caps, coils, and resistors, not into a robot, but into a living, breathing, animate animal. Maybe even into something approaching the intelligence of a humanoid. I would command at least part of the Universe by remote control! I would be God! ............ God, how embarrassing!

Ms. X reminded me that all I've ended up with each time is not a living organism, but a ROBOT. And reminded me, altho inaccurate in placing the program level of the cause (the Real Time Clock), that we've gone WAY too far in trusting the Robots -- that their Idiot Savant nature will turn on us, and take a big bite out of our flesh. Will we survive? That's for another post. (God, I hope I don't get sucked into doing that again!)

So that's my excuse for the oversight re the post from this single mother reminiscing about 'days when being 30 was old.' And my support for much of the posts on this thread from the Pollys: Anita, RonD, Flint, and others who pointed out defects in the lead post.

My bottomline recommendation: as an antidote for the confusion caused by Ms. X I heartily recommend a re-read of the IEEE Letter to Congress. It addresses the disastrous complexity level of the programs, AND THE INTERRELATED SYTEMS OF PROGRAMS -- in such a way as to be highly convincing of the danger ahead, without dipping into technical errorland.

One more bottomline I keep telling myself, something I figured out since looking at y2k in the past couple years: "In the details lies The Truth."

Whew! My insomnia is over, folks -- it's 8:45 AM. Back to bed.

Bill

-- William J. Schenker, MD (wjs@linkfast.net), June 25, 1999

Answers

From Murphy's Laws of technology:

#5.) If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

Hmm, doesn't sound too complicated to me.

And one of my favorites:

#27.) After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.

-- (tedjennings@business.net), June 25, 1999.

Thanks 'Doc'. Come back again...even if you've been sleeping well! I always appreciate your opinions. Good Luck...

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), June 25, 1999.

Thanks Billy Jim,

That was a very nice stabilizer you threw in there. A perfect way to calm all us hypochondriacs down with a few well chosen words of wisdom. Now, that was my serious comment on your posting. But I also have a question that your commentary brought to mind. You mentioned about those programmer notes in the margins, and how that could help or confuse the eventual remediation attempt. Is *that* the margin of error that I keep hearing so much about that could eventually do us in?

-- Gordon (gpconnolly@aol.com), June 25, 1999.

"To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer."

-- Murphy, err, Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), June 25, 1999.

Excuse me, Bill, but you said:

"And I can see now why Anita flames us Doomers."

Would you be so kind as to point out ONE example wherein I flamed ANYONE?

Thank you.

Anita

-- Anita (spoonera@msn.com), June 25, 1999.

ANITA:

You may be due a deep apology. My return to this forum after 1 1/2 years absense has been rather fleeting, grab a bit here & a bit there. Have seen you quoted as a Polly by all the other Doomers, glanced at your posts, and ASSUMED what I'd been told. I should go back and re-read them, ck 'em out personally (remembering my motto: 'In the details lies The Truth.' But I probably won't --- too damn busy.

However, I'll tread more carefully, and CAREFULLY read anything you say further.

How's that for a half-a**ed apology -- I'm getting to sound like a lawyer ---- yikes (And THAT comment will get me in trouble with Jeannie. Oh, I give up. Never really understood girls.)

Tnx for the post, Anita.

Bill

-- William J. Schenker, MD (wjs@linkfast.net), June 25, 1999.

Don't worry about it Anita, really. You are by far the most highly polished Polly we have, and everything you say is truely in the best of taste. It is, in fact, your finest quality....honestly. An admirable trait indeed, and one that *I* am sorely void of....LOL (don't let that go to your head....I still detect underlying overtones, but then, I've always had this 'detection device' and no ability to deal calmly with it's blaring sirens)

-- Will continue (farming@home.com), June 25, 1999.

underlying overtones ???

are they the same as overlying undertones ? or are they different ?

I think we should be told.

This smacks of a cover up. {G}

Have a pleasant weekend all.

W

-- W0lv3r1n3 (W0lv3r1n3@yahoo.com), June 25, 1999.

See thread...

DON'T Miss This Post!!! Best Programmer Explanation Yet

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 000ztT

And...

At the end of my rope

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 000zqa

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), June 25, 1999.

Bill:

It seems that some answers to the following have already been addressed while I was ADDRESSing the question, so please forgive me if I've taken undue license:

Here are my current thoughts on your issue, and I'm surely surprised that you're already awake and posting.

Bill:

I'm not quite done with you yet (obviously.) You said: "Is this nitpicking? Yes. Does it have revelance to y2k? Yes, because y2k is about fixing programs, and part of good programming is what's called 'good DOCUMENTATION.' And the essence of good documentation is writing your 'source' code in such a way that someone (including yourself) can come back weeks, months, years, and yes, unfortunately DECADES later, and TRACE THE LOGIC WITHOUT HAVING TO STAY AT THE KEYBOARD FOR 14 NITES IN A ROW."

You're making assumptions here, Bill. Good programmers document their programs. If the documentation isn't inherent in the program, the documentation is provided in a separate document. I once contracted for someone who needed someone to document a mini-computer application. I provided not only text, but flow-charts. The programmers were too lazy to do this themselves, so hired someone to do it for them.

You further said:

"But the plot thickens. Even with rotten documentation (usually in the 'REMARKS' column of your source code -- which is just 'margin notes' that the programmer makes to himself/herself about what he/she is trying to do with this particular section of the program) --- or worse, NO documention, i.e., NO comments in the 'REMARKS' column -- even then, there are many gifted programmers who DON'T NEED 14 NITES IN A ROW TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S GOING ON. These were called 'water walkers' in my day. A quick way to identify a water walker was to watch them do hexadecimal/octal/decimal conversions IN THEIR HEADS. Yes, this kind of brain made mincemeat out of program sequences that made mincemeat out of the brains of mere mortals, like me. These are the 'Anita Spooners' of the world. And I can see now why Anita flames us Doomers. It's NOT out of maliciousness. Her problem is simply that she is too brilliant."

LOL. AGAIN, Bill, you make assumptions. I never had the NEED to perform hexadecimal/decimal conversions in my head. That's the whole purpose of reference cards. Again, however, I'd like you to point to ONE instance in which I've flamed doomers. I flame NO ONE.

You went ON to say:

"Now, wait a minute -- maybe that's the answer to this whole programming problem, which is all y2k is. With brilliance at this level -- haven't we got the PERSONNEL problem licked? Can't we just sic these geeks on to the remediation problem, fixing code with 'one hand tied behind their backs?' "

Overcome by emotionalism here, Bill? Personnel is certainly NOT hard to find (despite the media's coverage.) The one hand tied behind their backs thought WAS amusing, however.

You THEN said:

"Now this is what I discovered about The Thick Plot: -- back in the '70s when I was struggling with Assembly language (struggling because I AM TERRIBLE WITH NUMBERS. And this from the son of a theoretical mathematician.) I discovered that the geeks, because Assembly was not COMPLEX ENOUGH to give them a rush, ROSE TO THE CHALLENGE and invented languages such as FORTH (I spent a month at Humboldt College in N. California, my corpse twisting in the wind of abject confusion understanding almost nothing, except that it did seem a wonderfully EFFICIENT language.) "

Um...Bill. If you KNOW that you're terrible with numbers, why did you enter the programming arena? There are a LOT of other careers out there.

More from Bill:

"And in their fateful attraction to complexity they also invented the 'C' language, and then 'C+,' and then 'C++' -- doing things that could have been done in Assembly, using a 'library' of 'macros.' (Which is a whole other story.) And of course, in betw Forth and C dialects there were dozens of other obscure arcane languages dreamed up (and actually occasionally used to control something in the real world.)"

Fateful attraction to complexity? For goodness sakes, Bill...EVERY language created was created to perform on a particular platform for a particular purpose. None was necessarily more difficult to comprehend than the other, yet you've already stated that you simply didn't have the aptitude that programming required. This is NOT a slam. There are plenty of fine people who simply don't have programming aptitude. Your skills are simply more suited for other areas. We ALL have our strengths and weaknesses. We need to recognize that and go with our strengths in our career choices.

And yet more:

"So what is in the center of The Plot? Well, it WASN'T a plot -- the water walkers didn't do anything on purpose --they just did what brilliant people do naturally: they made their programs so complex and sophisticated that they ended up writing code that IS TOO COMPLEX AND SOPHISTICATED AND UNDOCUMENTED TO BE FIXED IN TIME, GIVEN THE FACT THAT THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH WATER WALKERS TO GO AROUND! Most of the code is being remediated by NORMAL people, like the typical COBOL programmer."

Knocking COBOL programmers here, Bill? In addition to teaching students assembler language, I taught 3 years of COBOL programming. I ASSURE you that there are enough knowledgeable COBOL programmers out there to understand and fix the most complex of code. The whole purpose of COBOL was to require NO documentation. The language is as close to English as a language can get. COBOL II, however, using reference modification may require more explicit documentation. It is easily provided by using a * and describing what's going on. I do it all the time.

Bill goes on: "[COBOL programmers (Yes, of course, there ARE exceptions.) have never held a soldering iron in their hands, they have never debugged a system clock circuit. They can't make the connection between the hardware underneath the programs and the programs themselves. An Assembly programmer HAS to be able to this while writing his code.] Second, I conveniently glossed over the fact that the 'assembly' language quoted WAS NO WAY assembly language. Clearly a 'higher level' language (Looks like a birthdefected BASIC -- PL/1 combo?) "

I'll ignore this paragraph because I know you typed it lacking sleep.

and on:

"But, third and much more crucial I also ignored that the poster had assigned the duty of RTC (real time clock) to what really is the function of the SYSTEM clock (Think of the latter as the analog to your body's heartbeat, 60 to 80 Hz -- kind of slow ain't it -- unless someone flames you every time you make a post. After some of the hits I've taken on the Colloidal Silver threads I think I'm up around 120 and still counting.) [And I ignored that error in the face of having written all my apps in Assembly. And THAT was a giant step up from my initial contact with computers -- when I had to program in "0"s and "1"s ('machine' language.) Then I graduated to 'octal' and then to 'hexadecimal.' [Thank God I never toyed with 'EBSIDIC,' IBM's INTENTIONAL marketing ploy, to make everyone program on the only machines that understood EBSIDIC: yep, IBM mainframes.) All this is very difficult for someone barely comfortable with 'decimal' (which is what we all learned in kindergarten.) "

Hmmm...Is there a difference between EBCDIC and hexadecimal? Is there a difference between ASCII and octal? Let me know when you awaken, Bill.

(some snipped until Bill gets more sleep.) Then Bill goes on:

"The poster, Ms. X, is wonderfully human. She talks about her life like I can understand her, and how she is looking at the human condition. She can talk in terms of human VALUES. She can discuss the morals, the ethics, maybe even the mystery of life on this planet, and in this Universe, and what it could do to our society and our world. She can reach out and make connections between all this AND the TECHNICAL WORLD that geeks are typically boxed into (And they could never remain boxed into if they weren't so damn BRILLIANT!) And she is a MOTHER. And she gave a really good intro lesson on Computer Programming (the technical errors aside) to Newbies."

Gee, Bill. I have three almost grown kids myself. Is there something here that I don't understand? Is there something that states that mothers somehow can't think logically or state truths? I have three kids that would fight you on this one.

Bill continues: "How come she could do it? Well I'm reminded of something I used to repeat to myself from time to time while programming, when I'd be confronted with my addiction to the maddening profession, maybe after having finally pounced on a malicious bug that had previously escaped my disassembler, my debugger, my trapper, my tracer for umpteen hours, and then finally found it at 3 AM, after two previous 3 AM stands. I would say to myself: "Hey I know why I sit here, a prisoner of my keyboard, in the face of such repeated self-inflicted pain ----- when my wife is content to remain downstairs in the living room playing with our little son. It's because Wifey has already deeply participated in a miracle far beyond anything I'll ever be able to do with my little box with blinking lights and front panel machine code switches. But I'm still trying to play catchup. Still trying to do what only God can do: CREATE A LIVING THING. "

Face the facts, Bill. You simply didn't have the aptitude for programming. Others did and were able to combine their programming careers with bearing and raising children. I may be a geek, Bill, but when it came down to kids, I bore them with no more problems than I had completing programs, nursed them until I was skinny as a rail...did you ever try to nurse TWO kids simultaneously, Bill? One SURELY eats a lot in the endeavor, but I wouldn't allow formula to touch the lips of my children, and I wouldn't stop nursing until THEY indicated it was time.

(again...rest snipped for Bill's lack of sleep.)

Anita

-- Anita (spoonera@msn.com), June 25, 1999.

Wow, Anita, maybe you are real, after all.

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), June 25, 1999.

I can only pick out one valid concern here. People don't seem to have it on the ball IT wise like they used to. My guess is there are X amount of competent geeks who forge code but you can copy the code over and over so there's much more code than geeks. Add in an uncompromising deadline and you have trouble.

As for the rest, good night Bill. Sleep well.

Don't spend the night with your...

-- eyes_open (best@wishes.net), June 25, 1999.

ANITA:

Hey, now I see why so many Doomers flame YOU -- you're a feisty one, you!

Wonderful response to my post. Let's take a look.

"You're making assumptions here, Bill. Good programmers document their programs. If the documentation isn't inherent in the program, the documentation is provided in a separate document." Of COURSE, Anita. Now are you telling me that because YOU are a good programmer -- that the overwhelming majority of all programmers are 'good' programmers? If so, it will be the first profession I've encountered where the % is anywhere near that. From car mechanics, radio-TV techs, Telco linemen, to modern agbiz farmers, lawyers, and yes, MEDICAL DOCTORS --- we are SURROUNDED BY HACKS: guys who get the job done, with minimal independent thought -- crank it in, crank it out --- hey, I've got Monday nite football on my mind, don't talk to me about documentation -- I'll do that after lunch.

The stuff I saw when I arrived in the Computer R&D section of Northern California's Kaiser Permanente HMO in the mid '70s ----- in the programming protocols, the flowcharts, the 1000s and 1000s of bar paper stacks of printouts from the S370 (the majority of the code LACKING documentation) -- all of it the shambles that collapsed in the wake of a multi-million dollar implosion of the attempt to computerize the medical records system.

Ck me on this, but your logic here seems to be: "Well, EYE do a good job when I program -- so that negates your sweeping generalization, Bill."

But you're next line provides the intrinsic support for my claim of rampant mediocrity in the programing ranks:

".............. The programmers were too lazy to do this themselves, so hired someone to do it for them."

EXACTLY, Anita. Now a few people back in the '70s were appalled by the far-too-prevalent undocumented/poorly documented code piling up whereever one turned. They wrote books, gave papers, taught seminars, held training sessions, even occasionally added perks -- to get programmers to properly document. No luck. Even EYE tried my hand at it, in the form of supporting a geek acquaintance in developing his SDL language: a Self Documenting Language.

It had a lot going for it: it was the first serious attempt to write close to a real English language set of instructions AT THE ASSEMBLY LEVEL (a macro language of course) -- that's what made it a departure from COBOL and PL/1 kinds of things. And it WORKED --- when the programmer got done with a routine or module, it actually came close to looking like English. What happened to the effort?

Well, the programmer, apparently in a snit because this rich doctor flew back to NYC, visited his tiny little apartment in Queens, and offered to help in any way possible -- Why did he get into a snit? -- I'm not sure -- The closest thing I can figure out was he was down on 'rich' people (If only he had known my lifestyle --- my wife always complained: "I expected to marry a rich doctor -- and what do you do -- you waste all your time on computers and electronics --- the money always go out -- it never comes in.") Shortly after my return to San Fran Bay Area he stopped answering my fone calls. If I recollect his wife said he didn't want to have anything more to do with me.

So what did I do? Well, the project had such great potential that I hired a young geek friend I had made in my C.S. classes at Diablo Valley College to take over the project. He was a true 'water walker.' He gave me the green light. Six months later, a few weeks before the targeted completion date, he called me and said, "Uh, Bill, I've given up on the project -- I'm just not interested. CULater."

Anita, YOU are a good documenter. Anita, you are NOT the programming profession.

"LOL. AGAIN, Bill, you make assumptions. I never had the NEED to perform hexadecimal/decimal conversions in my head. That's the whole purpose of reference cards."

Anita, YOU never needed to do the headwork -- you used the same reference cards I used. But you are NOT representative of the water walkers, who in my experience were flakes of the first order, as far as their personal life, their programming habits, their arrogance, their disregard for scheduling realities was concerned. They had a lot to do with why computer programming ended up where it has. Why? Because they dreamed up the coding strategies, new approaches to old problems, that opened up vistas beyond imagination. E.g., Visicalc started a whole sub-industry. It wasn't written by someone following orders.

Furthermore, when real BIG trouble broke lose in the middle of the night, the water walker was called in and he more often than not walked on water --- and fixed the bloody problem before daylight, when production had to start rolling again. Will there be enough water walkers around on Sat, Sun, Mon, etc., etc., at the beginning of the new wonderfully promising millennium (that George Gilder promised me in yesterday's throwaway mail, about "Everything is bandwith -- microchips are passe!")?

Score so far? Well, the hacks don't document because they're lazy. And the water walkers don't document because they're arrogant. Together, their handiwork does not contribute to timely y2k remediation. (But as the Wise Old Men [& gals] from IEEE just intimated, even without that drag, we might well be in a cybernetic Catch-22 no matter what.)

"Overcome by emotionalism here, Bill? Personnel is certainly NOT hard to find (despite the media's coverage.)

Anita, your first sentence touches on a subtle point. Yep, you're right -- emotionalism describes a large part of my temperment and personality profile. It's one of the things that made writing good code so difficult --- cool heads write cool code. It's also an almost universal trait in all of us Doomers on this forum, and any other y2k site. It's one of our severely handicapping weaknesses. It's why we're so apt to jump at undocumented, unverified, unvalidated, anonymous reports and attempt to turn them into 'received wisdom.' We ignore that flaw at our peril.

Then there's the other side of that issue. You want some 'hard facts' supporting this other side. I ain't got 'em. I can't 'prove' any of my concerns, not only for the technical issues surrounding y2k remediation, but for the host of other things going haywire in our western civilization, and now being imported into other cultures world round. So because I can't prove them -- they can be ignored. That is a comfortable position to be in: the only things we need be concerned about are those things we can measure with our physical metrics. I think I'm exaggerating here --- as described by you below, it's hard for me to believe you raised three kids and didn't embrace the reality of that unmeasurable quantity, human love. Nevertheless, SOMETHING needs to be said here. I don't have the words for it. I can't even articulate it to my brain. Oh, what I need here is a strong dose of RATIONALITY. Too bad -- some people have it, and some don't.

"Um...Bill. If you KNOW that you're terrible with numbers, why did you enter the programming arena? There are a LOT of other careers out there."

Anita, I thought you'd NEVER ask! I hated medicine. Wanted to be a musician --- Dad wouldn't have it. Wanted to be a ski racer. Dad said no. Wanted to be an actor. Dad said no. Dad said you'll be a doctor, like me. So I became a doctor. A doctor who kept looking for something more fun. Electronics and programming sure turned out to be that. That was the point of my post about wanting to CREATE, Anita. Watching my programs do their thing was as close as I could come to like ..... having a baby.

Yep, Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde --- by day I wore my stethoscope, during the stealth of night I designed circuits, and programmed. Went to work part-time for the R&D dept. Then quit and worked fulltime on my medical info system for the ER environment. I finished it, fully debugged, and used it in the ER for 3 more years. The other Docs asked for the same system for their records. I went to the head of R&D and asked him for $2k for each of 5 units, for the other Docs, which I offered to build and program myself for $10k total. He said, "Well, Bill, why don't you write a RFG (request for grant) and I'll get you $100k to do a feasibility study?" "Hey, Ted, I don't NEED to do a feasibility study -- the system's been ONLINE for 2 years, no problems." "Sorry, Bill, that's not the way we do things around here." Ted had not been a programmer. Ted had not been a hardware man. Ted was an M.D. Ted was head of the department. Ted was a MANAGER. (Could ANY of what I just described have any connection with other similar episodes in other organizations re what went wrong with the y2k remediation? Naaaah.)

I quit, moved from the Bay Area to a town of 1200 and became a country doc for my last 6 years of practice and loved every minute of it. Would I have done the same thing with computers if I had it to do all over again? You bet --- just think, maybe next time I COULD create a living organism!

"...... For goodness sakes, Bill...EVERY language created was created to perform on a particular platform for a particular purpose. None was necessarily more difficult to comprehend than the other, ....."

Anita, you mean Assembly was not more difficult to comprehend than COBOL? Wow. Wow! Wow!! That Assembly didn't require much more elaborate documentation than COBOL? WoooWooo!

"Knocking COBOL programmers here, Bill? In addition to teaching students assembler language, I taught 3 years of COBOL programming. I ASSURE you that there are enough knowledgeable COBOL programmers out there to understand and fix the most complex of code. The whole purpose of COBOL was to require NO documentation. The language is as close to English as a language can get. ......"

EXACTLY my point, Anita.

"Gee, Bill. I have three almost grown kids myself. Is there something here that I don't understand? Is there something that states that mothers somehow can't think logically or state truths? I have three kids that would fight you on this one."

Anita, I thought it was clear that I am in great awe of this woman, as I am of a growing majority of women, whom I find have their act together both in the workplace and in the home. Most of us men would fall apart in the first week of trying to implemet a together housewife's work schedule.

"Face the facts, Bill. You simply didn't have the aptitude for programming. Others did and were able to combine their programming careers with bearing and raising children. I may be a geek, Bill, but when it came down to kids, I bore them with no more problems than I had completing programs, nursed them until I was skinny as a rail...did you ever try to nurse TWO kids simultaneously, Bill? One SURELY eats a lot in the endeavor, but I wouldn't allow formula to touch the lips of my children, and I wouldn't stop nursing until THEY indicated it was time."

Yep, we've already covered that first line of yours --- your 100% right (but my programs DID save lives in the ER.) Regarding the rest of the paragraph, two things:

1) Anita, you are a fairly good example of what Mormons describe as "SuperMoms." I think Catholics with large families are also good examples. I'm in constant awe of you kind of people. My wife had a heckuva time with just one kid.

2) I think I've finally got a bead on you, Anita. You are not a flamer of y2k Doomers. Your fire is directed BEYOND that. I'm not quite sure where it lands. But from my old WWII Field Artillery days I'd say you are 'bracket firing' to nail anyone who can't pat his tummy and his head at the same time. Your own personal competence is your weapon, and your proximity fuse is set to eliminate the possibility of reflecting on imperfection -- your own, and that of the cyberworld of computers we have created in the last 50 years. Will Cyberworld conquer all in the 21st Millennium? Tune in, folks, to what may be a great show in about 6 months.

Bill

-- William J. Schenker, MD (wjs@linkfast.net), June 25, 1999.

EBCDIC, BCD, FieldData, ASCII and others are coding formats or conventions. Octal, Binary, Decimal and Hex are representation choices. EBCDIC can be displayed as octal, binary or hex. So can ASCII or any of the others.

When I hear a programmer talk about coding in hex, I usually understand what they're talking about, but my regard for their technical skills drops a tad. I'll take Bill's statements with a grain of salt, I guess.

(A tad is a standard unit of measure. There are a fixed number of tads between "scorn" and "genuflect", but without my green card I can't tell you the number. We usually measure tads as an offset from a known value, and select a default known value based on whether the speaker is wearing a tie. Little background, there, for you non-programmers.)

-- bw (home@puget.sound), June 25, 1999.

eyes_open:

You said:

"I can only pick out one valid concern here. People don't seem to have it on the ball IT wise like they used to. My guess is there are X amount of competent geeks who forge code but you can copy the code over and over so there's much more code than geeks. Add in an uncompromising deadline and you have trouble."

This COULD mean trouble, but I haven't seen it in my experience. In fact, I've seen quite the opposite. "Cloning" programs IS rampant, yet what I've seen indicates that the portions cloned are at the level of defining what files are used. Two contracts ago, I investigated the Y2k ramifications on the system for which I was responsible. I started out scanning the source libraries for programs referencing files which contained dates. I found so many that at first I thought the problem insurmountable. Closer inspection, however, revealed that the programs never used those files at all.

Bill:

You said:

"Hey, now I see why so many Doomers flame YOU -- you're a feisty one, you! "

Yes, Bill. It IS a personality flaw, yet my friends have told me things like, "I never have to worry about you talking about me behind my back. If you thought me an asshole, you'd tell me to my face."

You went on to say:

"Of COURSE, Anita. Now are you telling me that because YOU are a good programmer -- that the overwhelming majority of all programmers are 'good' programmers? If so, it will be the first profession I've encountered where the % is anywhere near that. From car mechanics, ..."

This wasn't necessarily what I was saying, Bill. I stated earlier that I oftentimes look at code produced by others and wonder what they were smoking at the time. This does NOT mean that the code doesn't work, however. It simply means that the code took the high road to obtain the results rather than the low road, which would have obtained the same results in a more efficient manner.

You then said:

"Ck me on this, but your logic here seems to be: "Well, EYE do a good job when I program -- so that negates your sweeping generalization, Bill." But you're next line provides the intrinsic support for my claim of rampant mediocrity in the programing ranks: ".............. The programmers were too lazy to do this themselves, so hired someone to do it for them."

The guys on this particular project, Bill, qualified as the "Water Walkers" that you mentioned. They spared not ONE bit in their programming, making the programs difficult to understand indeed. Yet, *I* was able to figure out their logic, and I've already stated that I'm NOT a water-walker. If one understands the language, one can fairly easily figure out what the water-walkers did. If one does NOT understand the language, one has no business working on the project, either coding or documenting. Documentation is NOT the most fun part of programming. I took this contract because I had small children at home and the work could be done from home. I worked through the night many nights to get the documentation done to my satisfaction, even sub-contracting a neighbor to transcribe notes that I dictated into a recording device.

You went on to say:

"Well, the programmer, apparently in a snit because this rich doctor flew back to NYC, visited his tiny little apartment in Queens, and offered to help in any way possible -- Why did he get into a snit? -- I'm not sure -- So what did I do? Well, the project had such great potential that I hired a young geek friend I had made in my C.S. classes at Diablo Valley College to take over the project. He was a true 'water walker.' He gave me the green light. Six months later, a few weeks before the targeted completion date, he called me and said, "Uh, Bill, I've given up on the project -- I'm just not interested. CULater."

LOL. Bill, we've ALL been exposed to these types of folks in the programming profession. Fortunately, however, the "water walkers" are rare. I encountered one on my very first job. I'd ask a question and he felt I should research it on my own and stated as much. Oddly enough, when I state to some folks on this forum that I'd prefer to research on my own I'm told, "Trust me. Throw some extra rice and beans aside. I KNOW what I'm talking about." Of course that's when folks are being kind and not referring to me as a polly troll.

You continue with: "Anita, YOU are a good documenter. Anita, you are NOT the programming profession. "

Again, Bill...if one knows the language, no documentation is required. *I* document, but I can easily understand undocumented logic in languages of which I have knowledge. I may know more than some others in the programming arena, Bill, but you're certainly making unwarranted generalizations about the profession. As a contractor now for 10 some years, and having been a programmer for X years previously, I've built up quite a network of programming friends. As you might expect, we discuss projects regularly. If the world were in the dumper, I suspect I'd know. I'm seeing quite the contrary. Remediation has already been completed on most large systems per my input. Unlike Cory (or others), I don't extrapolate on my experiences or the experiences of those I know. I'm sure there ARE projects out there that are in the dumper. I just don't personally know of any, nor does my network.

You continue with:

"Anita, YOU never needed to do the headwork -- you used the same reference cards I used. Furthermore, when real BIG trouble broke lose in the middle of the night, the water walker was called in and he more often than not walked on water --- and fixed the bloody problem before daylight, when production had to start rolling again."

Bill, I've had more than my share of nightly calls, and although NOT a water-walker, I always managed to solve MOST problems by morning. You're falling into the trap of assuming that ALL problems will occur on Sat, Sun, Mon, etc. of the Year 2000. I'm NOT an embedded chip expert, so I can't speak to that, but I feel confident that I CAN discuss software problems. I've been on MANY remediation projects throughout the past years. Much of the code HAS been remediated already and put into production. Did it fail? Sure. Did we fix it in a timely fashion so the users wouldn't notice? Sometimes...sometimes NOT. If one wants a profession where off-duty time is considered FREE time, I certainly wouldn't suggest programming. Is the medical profession any different?

You continued with:

"Anita, your first sentence touches on a subtle point. Yep, you're right -- emotionalism describes a large part of my temperment and personality profile. It's one of the things that made writing good code so difficult --- cool heads write cool code. It's also an almost universal trait in all of us Doomers on this forum, and any other y2k site. It's one of our severely handicapping weaknesses. It's why we're so apt to jump at undocumented, unverified, unvalidated, anonymous reports and attempt to turn them into 'received wisdom.' We ignore that flaw at our peril. Then there's the other side of that issue. You want some 'hard facts' supporting this other side. I ain't got 'em. I can't 'prove' any of my concerns, not only for the technical issues surrounding y2k remediation, but for the host of other things going haywire in our western civilization, and now being imported into other cultures world round. So because I can't prove them -- they can be ignored. That is a comfortable position to be in: the only things we need be concerned about are those things we can measure with our physical metrics. I think I'm exaggerating here --- as described by you below, it's hard for me to believe you raised three kids and didn't embrace the reality of that unmeasurable quantity, human love. Nevertheless, SOMETHING needs to be said here. I don't have the words for it. I can't even articulate it to my brain. Oh, what I need here is a strong dose of RATIONALITY. Too bad -- some people have it, and some don't. "

You've said quite a bit in these few paragraphs, Bill. If I may, I'll use an analogy here (as much as I hate them.) You said something about cool heads and emotionalism. How do you think I bore three children without any pain whatsoever, Bill? Pain is a relative term. A paper cut is painful, IMHO. Childbirth, to one who understands the process is simply a series of contractions that result in a child flowing through the body once ready. Are contractions pain? No. They're simply sensations of which one is unfamiliar. Had I had a mindstate that said that childbirth WOULD be painful, it surely WOULD have been. The same is true of Y2k. If your mindstate is such that you KNOW it will be painful, it certainly will be. If you can look at the situation with a cool head, you'll perhaps realize that pain is in the eye of the beholder.

You went on to say: "Ted had not been a hardware man. Ted was an M.D. Ted was head of the department. Ted was a MANAGER. (Could ANY of what I just described have any connection with other similar episodes in other organizations re what went wrong with the y2k remediation? Naaaah.) "

I believe I already addressed this issue, Bill. Managers were the brutt of the problem from the beginning. It doesn't mean that the world is in the dumper today, however.

You then said:

"Anita, you mean Assembly was not more difficult to comprehend than COBOL? Wow. Wow! Wow!! That Assembly didn't require much more elaborate documentation than COBOL? WoooWooo! "

LOL. Again, Bill, if one is familiar with the languages, there is NO difference between Assembler and COBOL. For MANY years I considered COBOL a language that did the same thing as Assembler only required MUCH more typing to obtain the required results. In fact, COBOL requires many more instructions to obtain the results. Have you ever compared a COBOL program to the dump of the Assembler code, Bill? *I* certainly have. I was fairly amazed at the round-about way that the instructions were translated.

You went on to say:

"Anita, I thought it was clear that I am in great awe of this woman, as I am of a growing majority of women, "

You were in awe, Bill, because childbirth is not a function of your gender. As I said previously, we all have our strengths and our weaknesses. Men can't engage in childbirth. Women can. SOME women can engage in other things at the same time. SOME women can't. Snipping the rest of your post, I'll go on to say that SuperMoms don't exist. ALL moms make mistakes and the concept of a supermom is a fallacy.

You're right, Bill. I have no problem with Y2k doomers. Each one of us has to make decisions that we feel correct for ourselves and the ones we love. My fire is directed at MISINFORMATION. There are some on this board that conclude that if one states facts, folks won't prepare for Y2k. There are some on this board that suggest that if reports of successful remediation are reported folks won't prepare for Y2k. There are some on this board who feel that hyping problems is the ONLY way to get folks to prepare for Y2k. There are some on this board that feel that one should only appeal to emotionalism and pump that emotionalism to the extreme in order to get folks to prepare for Y2k. I simply don't agree, Bill. I call a spade a spade.

Anita

-- Anita (spoonera@msn.com), June 25, 1999.

So, does this mean we'll have electricity next year, or for the remainder of this year?

CAPS off, both of you. Write like an author.

-- Scared (Scared@dang.scaredsometimes), June 25, 1999.

Doc,

I like your style..hope you hang around for awhile. Anyone that has survived ER has something to share!

-- RN (confusedstill@thistime.com), June 26, 1999.

SCARED:

We PROBABLY will have electricity for the rest of the year. There's a DARN GOOD CHANCE we WON'T have it next year.

You're right about the CAPS, Scared. Good writers depend upon word sentence structure, the rhythm and the melody and the sounds of the words to get their point across. But I'M NOT A WRITER ---- I'M A TALKER. This writing stuff just gets in my way. If you were sitting in the same room with my while I'm doing this talking, you'd even see me wiggle my ears, raise & lower my eyebrows, and do other funny things like throw my arms up in the air, and move my nose embarrassingly close to yours -- JUST TO MAKE A POINT. Yes, I'm dangerous -- don't tangle with me -- leave sleeping dogs lie. You're scared. Hey, hang around my computer desk and I'll SHOW YOU WHAT SCARED IS REALLY LIKE.

But tnx for the advice anyway -- it's good advice -- just wasted on literary misfits like me.

***********************************

ANITA:

Your comments about COBOL's inefficiency are well-taken -- isn't COBOL the definition of verbosity?

Also, I appreciate your respect for DOCUMENTED FACTS in a discussion.

################################

Which brings me to another, related, issue --- suggested by a comment of yours near the end of your previous post: "If I may, I'll use an analogy here (much as I hate them [italics mine].)"

Analogy, metaphor, parable, analogous thinking, global generalizations, analog computers.

Anita, looking into these links may shed some light on why conscientious minds like yours often appear at loggerheads with conscientious minds like mine.

You hate analogies. I LOVE analogies! I feastoff them! Analogy has gotten me through life. It has saved my life more than once. It has enabled me to teach myself almost everything of value I've ever allowed into my head. It has enabled me to teach others when there was NO OTHER WAY to get thru the StoneWall.

I'll bet a lot of what I'll say below is old hat to you, but there may be lurkers who need to know this info.

(As an aside, Analogy is considered such a valuable tool for humans that it is used as a test for organic brain damage, and for certain types of psychoses: when certain brain centers are absent/destroyed/incapacitated the patient demonstrates what's called in the trade, 'concrete thinking.' The subject takes everything literally. There is no ability to make a crosslink to a similar issue.)

Which part of the brain handles analogy? The right hemisphere. But it's the LEFT hemisphere that understands mathematics. It does the linear, rational stuff. Am I saying that math people and programming people and engineering people don't do analogous thinking? NO WAY. You couldn't get by in your profession (or life) any better than I in mine.

But given your druthersyou'd just as soon avoid analogies. They are too SOFT a technology. They're hard ( impossible?) to quantify. All of this makes heavy left hemisphere people antsy (in contrast to heavy rights like me who get antsy around numbers, computations, linear stuff.) You like discrete, well-defined "facts," that stay within their boundaries -- not leaking out via often/ usually?/always? dubious generalizations, especially the global type. You're unconfortable with sweeping generalizations -- you're worried they may be simultaneously sweeping away too many crucial facts at stake in the issue. You don't like to venture out into fields not in your expertise. You've been burnt doing that before. (You should see all the 3d degree burns I'VE got from such habitual activity.)

So what we're looking at here are two categories of human thinking so different and polar that sometimes it appears to each of them that the other is from a different planet (Hey, maybe we are?) I'm not just talking about Anita vs Bill. I'm also talking about 'scientists' vs 'artists,' 'realists' vs 'visionaries,' 'pragmatists' vs 'dreamers,' and finally my (inevitable) global generalization: "programmers" vs "ordinary humans" --- to make a series of analogies (Heh, heh.)

Does this split have relevance to the Doomer-Polly gap on Y2K? I'm betting my money on it.

********************************

Now, finally while on this analog/digital subject I'd like to venture into a little related side road for a moment.

Mr. and Mrs. Average American (who are finally beginning to hear about y2k and asking questions) are very much into handling the Universe as if their brains are ANALOG computers! (of course not totally, otherwise humans would never be able to add up their Safeway grocery bill, among many other computational activities.) Speaking of Safeway they plan to be there Monday at 5:00PM to avoid the heavy grocery shopping crush of 5:30PM. Instead the creeping car ahead of them makes them late for their ETA -- they arrive at 5:30+PM. Big deal! But if their sched was being driven by a digital computer brain, and they arrived 1 millisecond after H hour, they'd probably fall to the ground in an epileptic fit, vomit, defecate, and lock up. God appears to have had the wisdom of wiring us to predominate our analog circuits.

Now what happens when Mr. and Mrs. wakes up to y2k possibilities. He hears from a Doomer that various degrees of uncomfortableness (Now let's be honest, Bill, you KNOW the only possibility you have in mind is TEOTWAWKI. OK, I'll fess up to that.) is one of those. But possible is a long way from probable or unavoidable.

So when comparing Doomer statements with Polly statements, he clicks on the Analog computer he's come to rely on in so much of his life, weighs the 'evidence' on the basis of what he's most familiar with -- that things get fixed by 'trial and error,' 'by gum and by gosh,' 'by the seat of one's past,' and other such phrases adding up to the same thing: "Hey, we've got it 80% right -- that's good enough for government work, isn't it?" -- and says what my multi-millionaire cousin (VERY smart boy -- made it all in the stock market starting with $500) said to me when I visited him in NYC in March '98. Upon first hearing about y2k from me, sitting across from each other in a lobby of the Waldorf his immediate, highlyemotional response, "Why, Bill, that's IMPOSSIBLE!!!!

Of course it's "impossible." Analog maneuvers would never allow anything like that to happen.

Probably impossibly yours,

Bill

-- William J. Schenker, MD (wjs@linkfast.net), June 26, 1999.

I DO enjoy discussing this with you, Bill, despite our differences in opinion. I would certainly enjoy discussing this further via E-mail. I'm sure that my posts on this subject bring most on this forum to the point of desiring to seal my lips with the infamous duct-tape. (grin)

For the poster SCARED: Electricity being on, off, dirty, clean, etc. is a function of location. Construction workers are currently building a house next-door. Their constant digging into the ground has shut off our electricity, and our phones, and NOT just once. Aside from that construction, we suffered a power outage for about 5 hours a week or so ago. It's important to keep up with the progress of your utility company. It's my belief that my area will suffer few inconveniences come the year 2000, but we may very well suffer some inconveniences when they engage in final testing in September of 1999. There's no world-wide grid, so what happens grid-wise in other areas may affect you or may not affect you. *I*'m fortunate to be connected to the Ercot grid, which encompasses only the state of Texas. Look into YOUR area. Ask questions. DEMAND answers.

Anita

-- Anita (spoonera@msn.com), June 26, 1999.

"So when comparing Doomer statements with Polly statements, he clicks on the Analog computer he's come to rely on in so much of his life, weighs the 'evidence' on the basis of what he's most familiar with -- that things get fixed by 'trial and error,' 'by gum and by gosh,' 'by the seat of one's past,' and other such phrases adding up to the same thing: "Hey, we've got it 80% right -- that's good enough for government work, isn't it?""

This is one of the problems when NON-Technical people or people who are not used to the logical thought patterns required of a "good Programmer" start using analogies.

A "Good Programmer" does not write or repair programs by a trial and error methodology. Oh sure sometimes when there is a fire under your butt you may try a quick fix, but these "Quick Fixes" are short term and will be fully integrated into the code or removed entirely.

y2k is not a "quick fix" situation and has not been approached as such by any IT department that I have ever heard about. On the contrary - the systems are analyzed for impact, approaches are documented, committees review the analysis and make a recommendation, management allocates the funds, the programmers are put to work implementing the approved solution while using the skills they have developed over the course of their careers.

Programming computers is *NOT* analogous to the mechanic that is trying every "trick in the book" to get rid of that hesitation in your 78 Caprice. No. Programming is very precise. It requires not only an aptitude for logic, but patience to make certain that the logic you are applying is as precise as the rest of the code - and preferrably written in the same style.

Programming takes a special mindset that most people do not possess. It is for this reason that it is difficult, at best, to explain the efforts of programmers around the world to people who wouldn't know EBCDIC from ASCII.

Gotta go mow the lawn now. That's pretty binary and I think I can handle it.

Yours in COBOL... Dino!

-- (COBOL_Dinosaur@yahoo.com), June 26, 1999.

Anita - I was really soaking it up until you spouted the following:

You've said quite a bit in these few paragraphs, Bill. If I may, I'll use an analogy here (as much as I hate them.) You said something about cool heads and emotionalism.

*******How do you think I bore three children without any pain whatsoever, Bill?******

Pain is a relative term. A paper cut is painful, IMHO. Childbirth, to one who understands the process is simply a series of contractions that result in a child flowing through the body once ready. Are contractions pain? No. They're simply sensations of which one is unfamiliar. Had I had a mindstate that said that childbirth WOULD be painful, it surely WOULD have been. The same is true of Y2k. If your mindstate is such that you KNOW it will be painful, it certainly will be. If you can look at the situation with a cool head, you'll perhaps realize that pain is in the eye of the beholder.

After I was done ROFLMAO - and barfing at the same time, I became very very angry at you. Arrogance in the work place is alright - to trivialize the birthing process is something else. Must be just peachy to be so efficient at everything. You made childbirth sound as if it was as easy as popcorn in the microwave.

don't bother responding with a multitude of paragraphs explaining yourself on this one. I won't return to this thread.

sigh.

-- justme (finally@home.com), June 26, 1999.

DINO:

Let's see if I can untangle what you've done to the logic of my "Analogy" post.

############################

You open with quoting my lines: "So when comparing Doomer statements with Polly statements, **he** clicks on the Analog computer he's come to rely on in so much of his life, ......."

Now you could have checked the previous two paragraphs -- where you would note that the **he** refers to:

"Mr. and Mrs. Average American (who are finally beginning to hear about y2k and asking questions) are very much into handling the Universe as if their brains are ANALOG computers!" AND also the next paragraph:

"Now what happens when Mr. and Mrs. wakes up to y2k possibilities [?]. "

But instead you choose your own reference for the **he**:

"This is one of the problems when NON-Technical people or people who are not used to the logical thought patterns required of a "good Programmer" start using analogies."

Hooooo could you have mistaken for the **he** here, Dino my young man --- possibly a doddering old Doc masquerading as an ex-programmer, "who wouldn't know EBCDIC from ASCII"?

Yes -- I've got it; yes, I think I've got it -- **I** am the culprit you've strawman'ed. From here on in you're easy, Dino. It's now no problem to ride on your confused identities by teaching the rudiments of 'good programming' to dolts such as yours truly. Thanks for that real neat lesson. Frankly I don't know how I managed to program in structured Assembly language in the '70s without such wisdom at my side.

Having embarked on your mis-identity trip you fill up two more paragraphs of bandwidth teaching further basic lessons of programming protocol -- firing accurately but at the wrong target, seemingly your own foot.

########################

So, Dino, do you have any idea why I have made a rare exception to my long-standing policy of not flaming flamers? 'Cause, some Newbie lurker to this thread, not being programmer-literate himself, would otherwise get so thoroughly confused by the turn this thread has taken with your epistle that he would miss the entire point of my post previous: that Joe SixPack doesn't understand digital programming logic, and needs to. Otherwise he'll no way be able to comprehend the significance of the y2k problem.

So thanks loads, Dino, you've put in a good day's work already. And now mowing the grass awaits you. But hey that's better than smoking the stuff --however, next time blow it off out of your blood stream before responding to this thread's logic. You'd come off looking like the intelligent programmer I'm sure you really are.

Yours in STRUCTURED ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE,

Doddering old Doc Bill!

-- William J. Schenker, MD (wjs@linkfast.net), June 26, 1999.

Dr. Bill,

I will start out by [re-quoting] - completely - my first two paragraphs, the first of which is a direct quote from the message (yours) I was responding to.

["So when comparing Doomer statements with Polly statements, he clicks on the Analog computer he's come to rely on in so much of his life, weighs the 'evidence' on the basis of what he's most familiar with -- that things get fixed by 'trial and error,' 'by gum and by gosh,' 'by the seat of one's past,' and other such phrases adding up to the same thing: "Hey, we've got it 80% right -- that's good enough for government work, isn't it?""

This is one of the problems when NON-Technical people or people who are not used to the logical thought patterns required of a "good Programmer" start using analogies. ]

Now, you chose to read my message as a flame directed towards you. I assure you that it was not intended as a flame toward *you*, but toward the mindset that you so accurately portrayed in your story. This mindset is rampant throughout the Internet and is most detectible when discussing Y2K.

What am I trying to say here is this: There are too many ARMCHAIR QUARTERBACKS that *think* that they *KNOW* what is/has/will happen and how we (the IT community) are so innept that we just sit idly by and watch as the dominoes start to fall.

I will not respond in kind to your message. Call it charity, if you must. All in all I imagine that you do have a good idea of how things in the IT community really are supposed to work. The experience level you claim to have is one that I wish many others in this particular forum shared. My own level of experience is increased on a daily basis just by observation alone. You might think that with almost 30 years in IT that I have seen it all. This is hardly the case. The field is growing so fast, it could, indeed, be compared to "the big bang". Noone knows it all, nor will they.

Thank you for your concern regarding my lawn. It is neatly mowed as of yesterday. Now it is time to shower and go to Church.

Yours in COBOL... Dino!

-- (COBOL_Dinosaur@yahoo.com), June 27, 1999.

DINO --- FIRST OFF, MY HUMBLE APOLOGIES -- MY PARANOIA GOT THE BEST OF ME -- I THOUGHT YOU WERE AFTER ME!

You responded like a gentleman. What more can I say, other than God often keeps me from making booboos, but sometimes he just says, "The heck with him -- let him get humbled."

Having got that out of the way, I think together we can salvage something out of our interchange --for the benefit of both programmers AND non-programmers alike.

OK, let's iterate the quote of one of my original passages ("--") and then your following comment (**--**), for the 3d pass thru the DO Loop:

"So when comparing Doomer statements with Polly statements, he clicks on the Analog computer he's come to rely on in so much of his life, weighs the 'evidence' on the basis of what he's most familiar with -- that things get fixed by 'trial and error,' 'by gum and by gosh,' 'by the seat of one's pants,' and other such phrases adding up to the same thing: "Hey, we've got it 80% right -- that's good enough for government work, isn't it?""

**This is one of the problems when NON-Technical people or people who are not used to the logical thought patterns required of a "good Programmer" start using analogies.**

Here's my take of that interchange, Dino. Digital Programmer-naive Pete lives mostly in an analog world --- gets thru much of his day with approximations. But Digital Programmer-hip Dino does too. We all do. You can't get to work and back each day without zillions of sequential imprecise actions. It is characteristic of the human condition, or better yet, the characteristic of Nature that it is OVERWHELMINGLY Analog in the way it executes its programs.

Further it has EVER been so, since recorded history began (unless more research uncovers some of those mysteries surrounding Stonehenge mathematics, and Pyramid geometries, and funny things discovered among Mayan relics.) Homo S. has walked the earth, solving problems to his left and right, ANALOG ALL THE WAY.

Dino, when you mowed the lawn today, I wouldn't be surprised if you cut the grass up and down in parallel rows. You HAVE to have, Dino. For if you ain't got a good dose of obsessive/compulsive in you (as I likewise have) you can't really make a good programmer (or a good medical doc for that matter.) Guys like you and me LIKE to make straight lines out of our mowing jobs. But you're not gonna tell me, COBOLski, that you cut those lines with laser precision.

So the grand sweep of civilization has always been Analog computations. Digital moves are the Johnny-come-latelys, have essentially only been around since the '60s (when they took over from the old analog and then hybrid analog/dig vacuum tube jobbies.) How can then expect naive Pete to grasp the Black Hole of digital technology: that one lost/changed bit can toss you into the end game: System Lockup? Or worse, System F**ckup? Yes, it's that Terror that you clearly point to in your critique in your posts here.

But having said that, Dino, let us ask each other: knowing what we know about the dangers of imprecision when dealing with digital -- what can we envision as our responsibility to the 'uncouth masses' out there 'who don't know any better'? It's certainly easy to spell out our frustration, looking again at your lines below:

**What am I trying to say here is this: There are too many ARMCHAIR QUARTERBACKS that *think* that they *KNOW* what is/has/will happen and how we (the IT community) are so innept that we just sit idly by and watch as the dominoes start to fall.**

As an alternative, how about passing on some of what we understand by handing naive Pete a modern parable, an analogy if you will? Here's one, excerpted from a post I wrote on Oct. 7, 1997, describing the same problem you do. Some people actually emailed me and said "Thanks, that explanation helps me understand how big a problem we may have with y2k!" It was published on the old Gary North y2k Forum:

##3. Mistaken identity. There's a very basic difference between the way people and the way computers solve a problem. This is the very crux of the humans' devastatingly chronic misplaced confidence in the cream-colored cases with all the blinking lights. Humans solve their problems using their brains as ANALOG computers. That means, for example, Dad "ballparks" a figure to Mom from the office to tell her when she can expect him home for dinner, & Mom "ballparks" a time for when dinner will be ready. In a happy home that means both will be within 80% of their target. That's what we'd call "good enough for government work," eh?

Computers, on the other hand (except for leading edge highly specialized neural network systems) need very precise, DIGITAL input to avoid serious misunderstandings. That means, for example, if Dad tells the computer he'll be home at 6PM then the computer will dutifully and precisely pull the steak off the grill at 6PM, and the family scenario will unfold beautifully at precisely 6PM --- unless Dad gets caught in traffic and arrives at 6:10PM, in which case there's a smoke-filled kitchen matched by the flames shooting out of Mom's mouth.

Or say, a computer is programmed to accept a date in the form of MMDDYY, like 101397 (Oct. 13, 1997). If instead it's handed the same date in the form DDMMYY (131097), and unless specific input filters are designed in -- it gets sick, throws up all over the table, has diarrhea all over the floor, and then drops dead of a coronary. "What's the difference?" you ask. Not one whit of difference. Unless you're a computer.

Or better yet, consider you've just written a ten-page letter to your grandmother. However, you've forgotten to sign it, so Granma can't tell it's the end of the letter, right? Yeah, sure .. when she gets the letter she reads all ten pages and says, "Ha, Billy forgot to sign his name again."

If you end that same letter on your computer, and it erroneously omits ONE BIT of the EOF (End Of File) character (ASCII 26), converting it to say ASCII 25, at the bottom of the last page -- goodbye Charlie -- you'll never see that file on your screen again -- it will disappear into the great Recycle Bin In The Sky. Oh yes, BTW, it will probably again do the puking and all the rest. Can you see now why most computer civilians can't understand what the big deal is about changing "just one small part of a program"?##

Dino, you know a lot more about y2k remediation than I do, and more than all the Petes who lurk these forums put together. Maybe you need to do some more volunteer Special Ed teaching to these people -- and hire someone to mow your lawn ---- for Pete's sake! (Now do you realize my only reason for responding to your last post? So's I could write this pun.)

Yours in OBSESSIVELY/COMPULSIVELY STRUCTURED ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE .... Tyranus Rex/Billy Jim!

-- William J. Schenker, MD (wjs@linkfast.net), June 27, 1999.

"for Pete's sake! (Now do you realize my only reason for responding to your last post? So's I could write this pun.) "

Cute Bill... :-)

I have devoted a lot of time toward the education of people in general whereas Y2K and computers are concerned. Some of it falls on deaf ears, some actually sinks in. I am neither polly or doomer and I believe that we will not be in that bad of shape here in the USA. Off shore in 3rd World Countries - well, that is another story.

"Yours in OBSESSIVELY/COMPULSIVELY STRUCTURED ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE .... Tyranus Rex/Billy Jim! "

I now dub thee "Tyranusaurus HEX". So now you have a title bestowed upon you about the same way mine was bestowed upon me so many years ago by some of my students.

Yours in COBOL... Dino!

-- (COBOL_Dinosaur@yahoo.com), June 29, 1999.