I suppose they figured, quite reasonably, that things written in the 60's would be updated by 2038 and to address this problem was premature optimisation. In t

I suppose they figured, quite reasonably, that things written in the 60's would be updated by 2038 and to address this problem was premature optimisation. In the 2000s 64-bit went mainstream which gave us a solid ~30 years to tackle this issue. 32-bit time was introduced in a time where there was a very real argument for it in terms of performance, simplicity, and cost. I'm not even sure if in hindsight the wrong decision was made.