1. Re: Leap Years (was EUPHORIA Digest - 20 Feb 2000 to...)
Daniel Johnson wrote:
># It happens that the solar year is 365 and a little less than a quarter of
># a day...that is to say, the time that it takes for the earth to circuit the
># sun. The difference accumulates, and every four years, we compensate...etc
>
>For your information, a "tropical year" is defined as 31556926 seconds, which
>for those of you who cannot do mental arithmetic is 365.24219907407 days. As
>for wobblings and slowings, a few years ago an extra second was added to the
>year due to unexpected earth wobbles, so I think the scientists have it sussed
>and will not need to decide that years divisible by 1000 are not leap years or
>anything like that :)
Which means that either in the year 3200 or the year 3600 we will need to
have an extra leap year...and we can all worry about that till then. If they
fix my telomeres, I might get that chance 
>
>Rob I've spent too much of today trying to hack C++ for my course. I don't
>know how you survive using it when you know there is a better alternative.
>
>Have you considered packaging Euphoria up to be available with mainstream
>distros ? It would be nice to use the package install command instead of
>messing around with web browsers and tar and gz...
>
Now you really have my interest. Which one of the other painful to use
languages has a compiler on almost every environment on earth, is highly
optimized, has about a zillion libraries available that are compatible, and
is mature enough to base another language on? I personally dislike C with
a somewhat purple passion, but I can't imagine which one of the dozens of
other candidates that meet these criteria that you would recommend. I have
seen many languages that provide interesting models, but none that meet
all the criteria. I'd be interested in your candidate/s as well as Rob's.
Everett L.(Rett) Williams
rett at gvtc.com
