Xref: utzoo news.software.b:7837 news.admin:14518
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!aplcen!boingo.med.jhu.edu!haven.umd.edu!decuac!hussar.dco.dec.com!mjr
From: mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.admin
Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed
Message-ID: <1991May20.204313.25340@decuac.dec.com>
Date: 20 May 91 20:43:13 GMT
References: <28357D59.17BB@tct.com> <wZ49228w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Washington Ultrix Resource Center
Lines: 14


	While I'm usually in 100% agreement with Henry Spencer about what
constitutes the Right Way to do software, I'd like to make one little
observation on the subject of dates:

	We PAY FOR COMPUTERS TO DO THE GUNCH WORK that humans don't want
to - such as scanning and parsing dates - that's what they are there for.
I personally don't care if my server spends 5% more time a day processing
news, as long as I don't have to spend any more time dealing with it. If
you force a human to be really careful about dates, or worse, to read the
reject logs or argue about software issues in news.software.b, you've
wasted more time - human time - the time that matters.

mjr.