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From: glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: no more primitive data types in Java (JDK 10+). What do you think?
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2012 01:55:07 +0000 (UTC)
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David Lamb <dalamb@cs.queensu.ca> wrote:
> On 20/04/2012 12:02 PM, Peter Duniho wrote:
>> On Fri, 20 Apr 2012 08:17:52 -0700, Lew wrote:
>>> But it did, by popular acclaim. There is no "real" millennium 
>>> other than the day after whenever it was hardest to get 
>>> New Year's Eve hotel reservations at Times Square. [...]

> No, they're deciding that when the leading digit changes is more 
> important than whether a year zero ever existed. Like Lew has 
> been saying, *language* depends on the way the common people use 
> words, not on what pedants think words ought to mean. I have 
> often lamented when people "misuse" my favourite words, but 
> I've become resigned in this area to masses winning out over 
> the cognoscenti.

If you think about it enough, you wonder why celebrate anything
related to special numbers. Not only that, these depend specifically
on the decimal representation. Shouldn't changes to the leading
digit in other bases also be important?

We like to celebrate birthdays, but again give special consideration
to those when the leading digit changes, though in that case
start counting at zero.

(As I understand it, in the Chinese system you are born one, and
add one on Chinese (lunar) new year.)

Now, when Kennedy promised to land on the moon before the decade
was out, did he mean 1969 or 1970? It seems that NASA believed
he meant 1969. (The July launch gave them some margin for later
tries if that one didn't make it.)

-- glen