3 ms·
> why not store the years since 1900 Most input systems were punch cards, which were designed to be fixed-length textual input directly from a user at a card p
by krallja 7y ago
> why not store the years since 1900
Most input systems were punch cards, which were designed to be fixed-length textual input directly from a user at a card punch machine. Teaching users how to map from “years since 1900” to the correct keys on the card punch is a lot more confusing and error prone than having the computer automatically convert from "71" to 1971.
- mytherin 7y agoThat makes a lot more sense, but if it is just input then why not do the conversion of the string "71" to the efficient byte representation of 1971 when it is moved into the storage. If the computer can do a mapping of "71" -> 1971 then why can't it also do a mapping of "10-10-71" -> 26214 (days since 1900-01-01).