No, Y2k was blown out of proportion. The largest part of the Y2K effort was to fix date formats and other date computations that would no longer work correctly at the change of the millenium. Problems like default century fields of 19 and software logic that would see 01 as 1901 instead of 2001.
It was a large and necessary effort that some scammers, MSM propagandists and others blew out of reality with the planes falling from the sky, power grids going down, etc.
A large part of the software base would not have correctly worked and needed to be fixed. Everything had to at least be evaluated.
No, it was not blown out of proportion, at least for the industry I work in, healthcare.
We had to test and evaluate the hundreds or thousands of pieces of software AND equipment that could have potentially caused problems, and we did find them.
Any time there is a problem with a date field in a charge file where an insurer is involved is serious. You don’t get paid, and you go broke. And they are looking for an excuse not to pay the claims, sending a completely wrong date is like handing money to them on a platter.
And every system had to be tested, from systems that powered operating room equipment to imaging equipment. And they had to be tested thoroughly. If you happen to be on the operating table or waiting for a crital image to come over from radiology for your collapsed lung and it won’t send properly because some snippet of code is looking to see if the date of the images meets some kind of valid date criteria.
Maybe it was overblown for people working in the utilities, aviation or something like that, but if the things I saw in medicine were any indication, there were problems in other fields as well.
They ALL had to be tested and correcte, which was a huge effort. I was quite proud of my institution’s actions prior to Y2K. They took it very seriously, and we did find problems.
Nothing personal against you, but to say it was blown out of proportion is not in any way correct.