Computer bugs in the year 2000
Sam Kendall
kendall at talcott.UUCP
Thu Jan 24 11:01:51 AEST 1985
> ... [T]his notion that when we
> reach the year 2000, computers will not accept the new date.
Yeah, this thought occurred to me when I took COBOL years ago and found
that data was encoded in decimal, and years often encoded in 2 digits.
I don't know about the IBM OS creation date/temporary file problem, but
other than that, the COBOL two-decimal-digit-year problem is the major
one. This is a pretty common thing to do in COBOL programs; COBOL is
the most-used computer language (I think, and in any case it certainly
is in the business/bureaucratic world); there are plenty of programs
that have been running for years, and for which the sources have been
lost.
I am posting this because I think a lot of people have never seen a
COBOL program, and so don't realize why the year 2000 will be trouble.
I think, though, that IBM will get moving on this problem around the
year 1995, if only so that the society on which they depend for profits
will continue to exist.
Sam Kendall {allegra,ihnp4,ima,amd}!wjh12!kendall
Delft Consulting Corp. decvax!genrad!wjh12!kendall
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