lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2000]   [Jan]   [6]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
    /
    From
    SubjectRE: time_t size: The year 2038 bug?
    Date

    Peter Svensson wrote:

    > By 2038 you will most likely still find lots of systems being manefactured
    > with 4, 8 and 16 bit processors as well as 32-bit ones.
    > "If you underpower it - the programmers will probably get it to
    > run anyway"

    That's the attitude that needs to go away.

    Underpowered hardware forces 'clever' coding which is more likely to have
    bugs than straightforward coding. Such code tends to break as it is
    maintained and tends to be less reliable than code that was designed on
    appropriate hardware.

    There's been a major move in programming away from 'clever' optimization
    and towards writing clean, clear code that is easy to maintain. The goals
    tend to have mutually-exclusive aspects.

    If you're going to argue that software should be designed to make hardware
    become obsolete less quicky, you're going to find that this is a two-way
    street. If you want your hardware to last until and past 2038, you're going
    to have to make sure that it's adequate not just for what your programmers
    can cram into it today, but also for what people will want it to do 30 years
    from now.

    Design obsolesence into the hardware and then blame it on the software.
    Wonderful. IMO, anything we can do to make this technique work better is
    ultimately self-destructive. If you design in just the hardware that the
    software needs today, your embedded system should break.

    DS


    -
    To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
    the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
    Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

    \
     
     \ /
      Last update: 2005-03-22 13:55    [W:2.557 / U:24.556 seconds]
    ©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site