[Info-vax] New VSI Roadmap (yipee!)

[Scott Dorsey]

David Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> David Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> lists at openmailbox.org wrote:
>>>>> I can't imagine ever using floating point in a new money handling
>>>>> application these days given all the other options available.
>>>> It was *never* acceptable!
>>>>
>>> Even when there was no other options?
>> 
>> There have always been other options.
>> 
>> This is one of the things we learned in my first Fortran class...
>> 
>
>Ok, in 1974, what were the affordable options.  For small companies, a 
>multi-million dollar IBM system was not feasible.  A quarter million 
>dollar PDP-11 system was one of the better options.

The option was to use an integer representing cents and split it up on
input and output.

Of course, if you had a PDP-11 you could be running COBOL or DIBOL, both
of which will do it for you automatically without the programmer having
to think about it.

If you were stuck with FORTRAN, though, you'd have to write functions to
do the I/O.

The problem is not a limitation of the hardware or the software, it is a
limitation of the programmer.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."