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> The author would also conclude: > The prediction that Y2K would happen was a bad one since it didn't happen. (We spent billions of dollars to make sure it did

by troupe 3y ago

> The author would also conclude: > The prediction that Y2K would happen was a bad one since it didn't happen. (We spent billions of dollars to make sure it didn't.) I would argue that we don't really know what would have happened had the world not spent all the money on upgrading systems. It appears a very large number of them would have continued to work as expected and it isn't immediately clear if the ones that were replaced would have resulted in a catastrophe.

snowwrestler 3y ago
The people who were working on Y2K did know what would happen in many cases. Their work avoided known huge messes in banking, infrastructure, aviation, and healthcare, among others. What they didn’t do, much, is write or blog about their work. A lot of fixes were to commercial or government systems running on commercial or government hardware. Publicly disclosing problems and fixes was not part of those cultures. So it is very hard, today, for members of the public to go back and reconstruct the problems and solutions to “prove” that there were real issues. Which has led some people to believe, incorrectly, that there were not real issues.
- troupe 3y ago
  I was part of that remediation effort in the healthcare sector. And yes there were things that were fixed that prevented problems. However, given how many things were not fixed, it is amazing how few problems actually happened. (Someone got charged for 100 years of late library fees...) Is that because we found and patched all the systems that would have actually had a problem? Maybe. I'm guessing it is because many of the things that were fixed, wouldn't have actually caused any signifiant problem--at least not at the scale that was being predicted. But as you point out, if there were any systems that would have failed in a catastrophic way, those were evidently fixed.

by troupe 3y ago

snowwrestler 3y ago

The people who were working on Y2K did know what would happen in many cases. Their work avoided known huge messes in banking, infrastructure, aviation, and healthcare, among others. What they didn’t do, much, is write or blog about their work. A lot of fixes were to commercial or government systems running on commercial or government hardware. Publicly disclosing problems and fixes was not part of those cultures. So it is very hard, today, for members of the public to go back and reconstruct the problems and solutions to “prove” that there were real issues. Which has led some people to believe, incorrectly, that there were not real issues.

troupe 3y ago
I was part of that remediation effort in the healthcare sector. And yes there were things that were fixed that prevented problems. However, given how many things were not fixed, it is amazing how few problems actually happened. (Someone got charged for 100 years of late library fees...) Is that because we found and patched all the systems that would have actually had a problem? Maybe. I'm guessing it is because many of the things that were fixed, wouldn't have actually caused any signifiant problem--at least not at the scale that was being predicted. But as you point out, if there were any systems that would have failed in a catastrophic way, those were evidently fixed.