5 ms·

Yes, it was a real crisis. This revisionist history that some are now saying it was no big deal. It was a big deal and many people spent many hours in the 90'

Yes, it was a real crisis. This revisionist history that some are now saying it was no big deal. It was a big deal and many people spent many hours in the 90's assuring that the financial side of every business continued. I am starting to get a bit offended at the discounting of the effort put in by developers around the world. Just because the news didn't understand the actual nature of the crisis (Y2K = primarily financial problems) is no excuse to crap on the hard work of others. It is sad that people that got the job done by working years on it get no credit because they actually got the job done. I see this as a big problem because Y2038 is on the horizon and this "not a big deal" attitude is going to bite us hard. Y2K was pretty much a financial server issue[1], but Y2038 is in your walls. Its control systems for machinery that are going to be the pain point and that is going to be much, much worse. The analysis is going to be a painful and require digging through documentation that might not be familiar (building plans). 1) yes there were other important things, but the majority of work was because of financials.

joshstrange 7y ago
This is always such an annoying problem: 1. Shine light on problem and make sure people hear about it 2. People respond and fix it 3. Outcome not as bad as you said it could be /because it was fixed/ 4. Some time later "That wasn't a big deal" No, it wasn't that big of a deal because we worked hard to fix it!
- mcswell 7y ago
  I have a vivid recollection of reading a Scientific American article in late '98 or early '99 that claimed that no matter how much time and $ was put into fixing Y2K before 1 Jan 2000, there was going to be a disaster; it was just a question of having a bigger or smaller disaster, but even with best effort months. I have recently looked for that article, without success. Does anyone recall it/ have a PDF (image) of it?
  - protomyth 7y ago
    Might be the October 1998 article "Y2K: The End of the World as We Know It", but its behind a paywall and I don't subscribe.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Mark my words, if the containment measures work and Covid-19 goes away, this is exactly what people will be saying. Drives me crazy.
  - joshstrange 7y ago
    To be honest I'd choose that timeline in a heartbeat over what I think we are barrelling to... But yes, it will drive me crazy if that happens.
  - gregmac 7y ago
    Yeah, I'm not sure if the original question was asked because of this, but I've had a couple conversations where we've compared the COVID-19 situation to Y2K. Even in this case, we have evidence of what happens from delaying response (eg: China, Italy) yet if proactive steps like shutting down schools, events and gatherings are effective you'll get people complaining it was all an overreaction.
theremightbe 7y ago
It was also a big problem for Medical records as well right? I recall hearing that there was a lot of work around making sure that immunization records and things like that were accurately converted.
- protomyth 7y ago
  Yeah. I seem to remember some MUMPS people talking about stuff they were having to do. I programmed Perl at the time, and MUMPS made no sense to me (it looked like line noise), but they loved it.
plughs 7y ago
Y2038 will be interesting because one wonders how many engineers will be around with the skills to address it. Even now it might be hard to scrape together a team.
- protomyth 7y ago
  I wonder how many systems still being sold today have 32-bit time stamps? I get the feeling you are dead on right about the skill problems, but I do wonder how many folks are only consumers and not originating any of the programming?
StaticRedux 7y ago
This is more prolific in software than just Y2K. At a company I work with, if everything is going smoothly and things are working, devs get a ton of crap for not getting more done, no matter the pace and productivity. Of course they get crap when things aren't working also. When people don't understand something, they can't tell the difference between a lot of effort to make something work smoothly and "it's clearly not that big of a deal"
keiru 7y ago
>Y2038 is in your walls Fuck me, as this is true

joshstrange 7y ago

This is always such an annoying problem: 1. Shine light on problem and make sure people hear about it 2. People respond and fix it 3. Outcome not as bad as you said it could be /because it was fixed/ 4. Some time later "That wasn't a big deal" No, it wasn't that big of a deal because we worked hard to fix it!

mcswell 7y ago
I have a vivid recollection of reading a Scientific American article in late '98 or early '99 that claimed that no matter how much time and $ was put into fixing Y2K before 1 Jan 2000, there was going to be a disaster; it was just a question of having a bigger or smaller disaster, but even with best effort months. I have recently looked for that article, without success. Does anyone recall it/ have a PDF (image) of it?
- protomyth 7y ago
  Might be the October 1998 article "Y2K: The End of the World as We Know It", but its behind a paywall and I don't subscribe.
umanwizard 7y ago
Mark my words, if the containment measures work and Covid-19 goes away, this is exactly what people will be saying. Drives me crazy.
- joshstrange 7y ago
  To be honest I'd choose that timeline in a heartbeat over what I think we are barrelling to... But yes, it will drive me crazy if that happens.
- gregmac 7y ago
  Yeah, I'm not sure if the original question was asked because of this, but I've had a couple conversations where we've compared the COVID-19 situation to Y2K. Even in this case, we have evidence of what happens from delaying response (eg: China, Italy) yet if proactive steps like shutting down schools, events and gatherings are effective you'll get people complaining it was all an overreaction.

theremightbe 7y ago

It was also a big problem for Medical records as well right? I recall hearing that there was a lot of work around making sure that immunization records and things like that were accurately converted.

protomyth 7y ago
Yeah. I seem to remember some MUMPS people talking about stuff they were having to do. I programmed Perl at the time, and MUMPS made no sense to me (it looked like line noise), but they loved it.

plughs 7y ago

Y2038 will be interesting because one wonders how many engineers will be around with the skills to address it. Even now it might be hard to scrape together a team.

protomyth 7y ago
I wonder how many systems still being sold today have 32-bit time stamps? I get the feeling you are dead on right about the skill problems, but I do wonder how many folks are only consumers and not originating any of the programming?

StaticRedux 7y ago

This is more prolific in software than just Y2K. At a company I work with, if everything is going smoothly and things are working, devs get a ton of crap for not getting more done, no matter the pace and productivity. Of course they get crap when things aren't working also. When people don't understand something, they can't tell the difference between a lot of effort to make something work smoothly and "it's clearly not that big of a deal"

keiru 7y ago

>Y2038 is in your walls Fuck me, as this is true