COBOL?
© Copyright Frank D. Kanu 2000-2008
Scene: Distant future, in a clinic where a cryogenics patient, who had had himself frozen in expectation of a cure for his illness, is being revived.
Patient: What year is it? How long have I been asleep? Tell me about the present.
Counselor: This is a little difficult to explain. A cure for your illness was found ages ago, but it was not considered a kindness to revive people from your era– too much of a culture shock. However, we do occasionally bring back a few if we think they can contribute to society.
Patient: I’ll do anything I can. What is it about me that makes me an asset? And you still haven’t told me what year it is.
Counselor: The year is 9998— and your biography says you were a COBOL programmer.
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Scene: Distant future, in a clinic where a cryogenics patient, who had had himself frozen in expectation of a cure for his illness, is being revived.
Patient: What year is it? How long have I been asleep? Tell me about the present.
Counselor: This is a little difficult to explain. A cure for your illness was found ages ago, but it was not considered a kindness to revive people from your era– too much of a culture shock. However, we do occasionally bring back a few if we think they can contribute to society.
Patient: I’ll do anything I can. What is it about me that makes me an asset? And you still haven’t told me what year it is.
Counselor: The year is 9998— and your biography says you were a COBOL programmer.
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09:06 on Thursday, August 4th, 2005
With a two-digit year date(YYMMDD), it is impossible to tell what century you’re in, and that was at the core of the problem. The proper fix is to change your databases to a four-digit year date(CCYYMMDD), and adjust all the programming and user interfaces to match. Depending on how the original two-digit year date was stored, it would be easy or hard to implement this change.
Many companies didn’t. They simply created a formula that said if the year is above a threshold value(often 47), that’s the 20th century, otherwise it’s the 21st century. So, 570204(Febrary 4, ‘57) is 19570204, while 150507(May 7, ‘15) is 20150507. In other words, in less than 50 years, we’re right back where we started.