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Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

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Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#311

Post by marcus_holmes »

abiogenesis wrote: post #235
dwheeler wrote: post #30

Yes, the y2k crisis was real, or more accurately, would have been a serious crisis if people had not rushed and spent lots of money to deal with it ahead of time. In many systems it would have been no big deal if unfixed, but there were a huge number of really important systems that would have been a serious problem had they not been fixed. Part of the challenge was that this was an immovable deadline, often if thing…

> people literally spent tens of billions of dollars in effort to fix it The sceptic inside me is curious as to how much they actually accomplished in their effort to fix it. I mean, yes, they spent billions to get millions of lines of code read, but how many fixes have been made and what would be the cost (when compared to those billions of dollars spent) if they weren't fixed at all.

Lots of fixes were made. Everything would have broken if they hadn't been fixed.

Why are you sceptical about this?

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#312

Post by marcus_holmes »

jshevek wrote: post #306
dwheeler wrote: post #30

Yes, the y2k crisis was real, or more accurately, would have been a serious crisis if people had not rushed and spent lots of money to deal with it ahead of time. In many systems it would have been no big deal if unfixed, but there were a huge number of really important systems that would have been a serious problem had they not been fixed. Part of the challenge was that this was an immovable deadline, often if thing…

> treated it after the fact as if it was hype or hysteria I agree with everything you and the parent said, but there was also hype and hysteria on top of it all - especially among the communities of preppers, back to the landers, and eco-extremist types. I met entire communities of technophobes who declared I was just ignorant or 'a sheep' and refused to believe me when I tried to explain that the industry was workin…

This. So many parallels with every "looming disaster" since. The media went into frenzy mode a few times, predicting the End Of The World As We Know It and scaring everyone witless.

And a few people did take it really seriously and spend the Millennium in some remote place where they would stand a chance of surviving the collapse of Western Civilisation.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#313

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

- Why did you catch that?

+ because it was going to fall.

- Are you certain?

+ yes.

- but it didn't fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn't change the fact that it was going to happen.

Minority Report , 2002

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVGQHw9jrsk

People worked for years in the late 1990s replacing systems that were not Y2K compliant with new ones that were.

It is becoming ever more common to question the veracity of disaster averted through effort. And it is very dangerous.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#314

Post by marcus_holmes »

fleetingmoments wrote: post #173
Diederich wrote: post #85

To add a little nuance: A global retailer you've definitely heard of that used to own stores in Germany spent a lot of time preparing for Y2K. This was a long and painful process, but it got done in time. But problems still slipped through. These problems ended up not being that big and visible because a large percentage of the code base had just been recently vetted, and a useful minority of that had been recently u…

Couldn't the rollover be simulated ahead of time by simply setting the date forward? Seems crazy that you had to have people on the ground fixing things as the clock struck 0.

You can do that with test systems, but not live ones. People object to having their bills dated 98 years ago and overdue on the day they were issued ;)

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#315

Post by marcus_holmes »

davismwfl wrote: post #4

From someone who went through it and dealt with code, it was a real problem but I also think it was handled poorly publicly. The issues were known for a long time, but the media hyped it into a frenzy because a few higher profile companies and a lot of government systems had not been updated. In fact, there were still a number of government systems that were monkey patched with date workarounds and not properly fixed…

> but the media hyped it into a frenzy because

Because they make more money if people are scared and clicking refresh every few minutes.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#316

Post by econcon »

dwheeler wrote: post #30

Yes, the y2k crisis was real, or more accurately, would have been a serious crisis if people had not rushed and spent lots of money to deal with it ahead of time. In many systems it would have been no big deal if unfixed, but there were a huge number of really important systems that would have been a serious problem had they not been fixed. Part of the challenge was that this was an immovable deadline, often if thing…

I wonder how many y2k deniers are there.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#317

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

abiogenesis wrote: post #235
dwheeler wrote: post #30

Yes, the y2k crisis was real, or more accurately, would have been a serious crisis if people had not rushed and spent lots of money to deal with it ahead of time. In many systems it would have been no big deal if unfixed, but there were a huge number of really important systems that would have been a serious problem had they not been fixed. Part of the challenge was that this was an immovable deadline, often if thing…

> people literally spent tens of billions of dollars in effort to fix it The sceptic inside me is curious as to how much they actually accomplished in their effort to fix it. I mean, yes, they spent billions to get millions of lines of code read, but how many fixes have been made and what would be the cost (when compared to those billions of dollars spent) if they weren't fixed at all.

if you're asking "was the money well spent?" then I'm sure it was as well spent as usual, i.e. mistakes got made, a percentage was wasted and some contractors made very good rates. But in the end we got there.

If you asking "would it be better to have done nothing?" then I would have to say No, of course not. What are you thinking?

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#318

Post by dragonwriter »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #313

- Why did you catch that? + because it was going to fall. - Are you certain? + yes. - but it didn't fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn't change the fact that it was going to happen. Minority Report , 2002 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVGQHw9jrsk People worked for years in the late 1990s replacing systems that were not Y2K compliant with new ones that were. It is becoming ever…

> It is only in the last few years that it has become common to question the veracity of disaster averted through effort.

No, it isn't. Questioning whether Y2K was overhyped started before Jan. 1, 2000 and accelerated on Jan 1, 2000 when there weren't major breakdowns. If you are too good at mitigating a problem before it manifests, there's a good chance lots of people will doubt there was a problem to mitigate. On the other hand, if it's a sui generis problem like Y2K, it's by definition too late for their doubts to impact mitigation efforts for the one potential occurrence, so it doesn't matter all that much. For a recurring problem, where those doubts can impact preparedness for the next potential occurrence, that's a bigger challenge.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#319

Post by bkor »

bridgerj wrote: post #260

There are really a couple of issues in this topic. First, was there a potential problem due to dates? Second, was the massive scare campaign justified? The answer to the first question is yes. There was a potential problem. However the companies and government departments that were affected had started planning in the early 90s, and they prepared during the decade. Many took the opportunity to embark on huge system u…

> There was a potential problem. However the companies and government departments that were affected had started planning in the early 90s, and they prepared during the decade.

I can point to several huge companies who did nothing until 1998 or even 1999. The media scare helped with that (priority, money) a lot.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#320

Post by C1sc0cat »

skissane wrote: post #271
dwheeler wrote: post #30

Yes, the y2k crisis was real, or more accurately, would have been a serious crisis if people had not rushed and spent lots of money to deal with it ahead of time. In many systems it would have been no big deal if unfixed, but there were a huge number of really important systems that would have been a serious problem had they not been fixed. Part of the challenge was that this was an immovable deadline, often if thing…

From what I've heard, a number of IT departments used it as justification to dump legacy systems. For example, at a former employer of mine, a big justification for getting rid of the IBM-compatible mainframe and a lot of legacy systems which ran on it (various in-house apps written in COBOL and FORTRAN) was Y2K. In reality, they probably could have updated the mainframe systems to be Y2K-compliant. But, they didn't…

I was working at British Telecom at the time and we found about 500 or so systems that where running but no longer had any value.

And don't get me started on Oracle refusing to provide updated y2k compliant backports!

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