2000 Problem

Your year 2000 article (Aug. 17) is wrong about the so-called “error” regarding the two-digit date field. The decision to use two digits was the right one at the time, and I would make it again, as I did then. Two digits, multiplied millions of times in data records, was a significant proportion of the space available in early computers.

The error is the shortsightedness of business managers who failed to replace those systems, which were never intended or designed to be in production 20, 30 or more years later.

Actually, the bigger Y2K problem is in computer chips, which number some 40 billion. They also use a data algorithm which is insufficient for the Y2K problem, but they were--and are still--built by engineers, not programmers.

BOB McCONNELL

Manhattan Beach