Computer bugs in the year 2000

[Sam Kendall]

> ... [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