<programming> (Y2K) A common name for all the difficulties the turn of the century may bring to computer users.
Back in the seventies and eighties the turn of the century looked so remote and memory/disk was so expensive that most programs stored only the last two digits of the years. Those of them which will still be in use will produce surprising results after 2000: they may believe that 1 January 2000 is before 21 December 1999 (00<99), they may calculate the day of week wrong, etc. Some programs even used the year 99 as a special marker; there are rumours that some car insurance policies were cancelled as driving licence expiration year of 99 was used to mark a deleted records.
Just how serious the `century meltdown' will be is difficult to estimate. Although few programs written decades ago are in use in their original form, blocks of code might have migrated to newer software so tracking down all of them is next to impossible. The only reasonably sure test is to set the computer's clock forward to 23:59 31 Dec 1999 and see what happens.
(25 Nov 1996)