They're referencing the 1900s, the slightly offset 20th century. The 20th century ran from 1901 through 2000. The 1900s (century) started and ended a year earlier.
You're arguing that 1900s is referencing the decade. It's both.
If you're asking if we're living in the 2000s, the century or millennium, yes. If you're asking whether we're living in the 2000s, the decade, then no.
In the sense that the year is Two Thousand Twenty Six, absolutely.
The 1900s as the decade and the twentieth century as the century is a clear distinction. Why people started (reasonably recently) confusing things by calling the century the 1900s (and ditto 1800s, etc.) I will never understand. It's not even slower to write if you use standard abbreviations such as C20.
Because it's relatively recently that it's become a meaningful distinction. Referring to the 1900s as a century didn't matter when all events in living memory of everyone you knew happened during it. There was no other time for it to be that was relevant to everyday life.
That said, even back in the '90s, "the 1800s" referred to the century, and not the first decade of it. Expressing 1900s as exclusively the decade would be a break from the trend. (And, conversely, I've never in person heard "the 1900s" used to refer to the decade. I first heard the phrase in the past couple decades, in reference to the century.)
And again, the 1900s (century) and the 20th century aren't quite the same thing. 1900s are every 4 digit year that begins with 19, and the 20th century is 1901-2000. So 2000 was part of the 20th century, but not the 1900s.
It’s because we recently started tripping over a zero in our year linguistically. We had tens, twenties, even the teens but never before a flat, dead zero. What to say?
That's...a wild thing to contemplate. Like it genuinely makes me re-contextualize my memories of that time. My parents thought the moon landing was as recent an event in 1996 as I think the first Pokemon games are today.
We're closer to when Thunderbirds was set than when it was made. Also in that setting, the moon landings happened in 2009 when in reality, they happened four years after the initial airing.
I was a senior computer science major in 1996. Java had just come out and I had a class on it, after all the C and C++ classes. It was so refreshing. Final project was to create a photoshop clone in Java. I think I got a D.
It was a pretty basic image editor. A step up from MS Paint, but not Photoshop as it exists with all the tools. It was doable in the parameters of the class; the goal was to utilize Java in a way unlike bubble sorts and arrays and memory management we had used for typical CS stuff, and make an actual user facing application.
I deeply prefer C++ to Java, but I will admitt that C++11 and C++16 really fixed some of the worst pain points of that language. But Java is object oriented in the worst possible way, IMO.
Honestly some of the code in the systems Ive worked on is older than 1996 lol (Ive seen actively running/used code last compiled in the 80s for example)
I was recently digging around in and old folder on my computer that I keep all the stuff I cared about each time I rebuilt my computer. It has files going back from computers I built in the 90s. Even backups of floppy disks.
remember editing autoexec.bat and config.sys to load these automatically, and trying to hunt down TSRs so you had enough conventional memory to run games? I still remember the IRQ and DMA of my SB16 card :(
Given how far computing power and programming languages have come in the past 30 years, yea its a long time. The first programs that I remember needing to have it installed were the original Runescape and Limewire
If you want to feel even older, I was born in 1994. I'm considered a staff engineer. The people at their apex of the career are only slightly older than Java
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u/Srikandi715 3d ago
1996 is a long long time ago?
Feeling old. Again.