h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The small impact of the Millennium Bug is nothing to do with the fact that the year 2000 year was a leap year. It is explained by the millions of pounds spent on modifying programs so that they would work when the date 'clocked over' from 99 to 00.

As someone who spent 18 months rewriting software to ensure that it would work when the year 2000 arrived, I am proud of the job that I and my fellow programmers did to fix this problem caused by short-sighted programmers in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

I have to agree the Y2K disaster turned out to be a tempest in a teapot. Some of the computer geeks (in a good way ) I associate with were predicting things up to and including the world shutting down, one time zone at a time. So yes, a pat on the back is in order.

I'm tempted to defend those 60's programmers who were coping with Fortran and COBOL's limited "card width" (80 columns, every one expensive). With the efforts they were making to get ANYTHING working, the two digit year was way down the list ... OK, it wasn't on the list of things to worry about. And who would've thunk those programs would be in use decades later?

But I won't. I agree the problem got put off too long, with everybody thinking "let the next shift take care of it". (A famous line from my chemical plant days - and apparently the budget policy of the current administration in Washington).

BTW, I am still writing checks on blank forms with the date including "19__"

I feel it completely necessary to pop a link in from the old Digital Village site. If you didn't see this before the millenium you missed something really special... And boy did Douglas get it right!

http://www.tdv.com/html/pedants.html

Sorry for the delay, but I'll get back to this in mid-July. See my journal if you want the gory details.

Ah, I see ... glad the longer term outlook is good, see you in July.