Posted on 08/11/2018 12:29:20 PM PDT by SamAdams76
I was remembering today the big Y2K scare we had during the late 1990s. Does anybody remember that? All the computers in the world were to shut down at midnight January 1, 2000 because apparently the computers would not be able to recognize "2000" as a valid year and go haywire, thinking it was 1900 instead.
As with many conspiracies, there was a grain of truth to this. There were many software programs at the time that had to be re-programmed to accept 2000 as a valid year. My wife was a COBOL programmer at the time and she had a few banner years as a contractor, fixing this bug. One one project, they were paying her nearly $150/hr.
I remember many Freepers here that were stocking up on canned goods and such, expecting the modern world to come to a sudden halt, forcing us back to a more agrarian way of life.
I was a Y2K skeptic but I do remember my heart skipping a beat as we turned the clock to midnight on December 31, 1999.
Out of hundreds and hundreds of program testing I found one that needed to be changed.
It was a scam. I have been designing and installing embedded devices since 1972. There never was any "danger". The worst that could happen is people's records would be sorted in the wrong order. Very few embedded devices keep time and date. The worst that could happen to something like an elevator is that it would take up a weekend parking station in the middle of the week.
It was a scam compounded by those who wanted to make some money and others who wanted to exercise power over others.
Would you have found it if you didn't do all of that testing?
“The biggest part of that scare was the government saying that nothing bad would happen.”
“That’s odd”
The problem for me was that Clinton was president - but yes, I did hear about all the steps taken...all worked out!
Sorted records in the wrong order? Crashed, no. I can't think of any reason why a date problem would cause any true havoc. Please provide details of any case you know to be contrary to this assertion.
Yeah, dividing by zero doesn’t cause hardware failures. No Y2K problem was a divide by zero. It was all hype.
Agreed
I spent a year leading a team of engineers fixing problems in our chemical complex. I was still nervous as hell on 12-31-99. But, we made through.
Well that depends what was contained in those sorted records and how they got processed downstream.
Describe the details of how it could cause catastrophic problems. It could cause sort problems and outrageous billing errors, none of which would be taken seriously. No Y2K bug could have cause any hardware failure.
Please, use the term "programmer". Coder is used by those who have no clue.
Not a scam. I worked for a small software company that had niche software that tracked investments and calculated returns. It had to be rewritten to work after 12/31/99. We got it done a couple years early so nothing happened except to a handful of users who didn’t update.
Re: For a long time years were stored as two digits because computer memory was expensive and limited back in the 80’s and early 90’s, and space had to be carefully conserved. The problem was known all along, but the typical excuse of programmers was “I’ll be retired by the year 2000”. But of course, dreams of retirement are usually premature.
Based upon my experience I would change that to ‘the typical excuse of IT Managers’. A second managerial excuse was that the program would be obsolete by 2000.
I remember it well. At the time, the application I was supporting was written in a 4GL that treated all dates as the number of days since 1600 or so. Because of that, most of the “changes” I made were cosmetic, to make sure that my input files and output files used 4 digit years. For our largest input feed, that was not a problem, since we had proactively set the dates to 4 digits a few years before when we were rewriting the interface file.
About the only positive thing that came from Y2K occurred in September, 2001. Our company had about 9 floors of staff in WTC2 (low enough that all but 1 or 2 made it out), and had to relocate to our emergency site in New Jersey. Since Y2K forced us to revisit and revamp our contingency plans company wide, we were up and running in New Jersey by noon on the 11th.
At least two people died because y2k bugs were not fixed.
BTW....how do I know you are not “one of them”?
Problems, yes. Catastrophes, no.
I did. I worked in software support, and 99% of our users were fine, but those who didn’t update found it wasn’t working right. No doubt they thought it was a scam too.
Link please.
“DUDE, no serious problems would have occurred if they left the whole thing blow over except that some sort orders would be not correct. That would make for some very large or very small billings, which nobody would believe in the first place. No control system would have noticed.
Problems, yes. Catastrophes, no.”
Control systems would have been impacted. People died.
Already posted.
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