There was very little fallout to the Y2K bug, which begs the question: was the Y2K crisis real and well handled or not really a crisis at all?
Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?
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Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?
#2I have always wondered the same thing. I came to the conclusion that it's pretty difficult to determine that.
I lived and worked as a software developer through the Y2K "crisis" (although I wasn't working on solving the crisis myself). Everyone was very worried about it. Nothing really went wrong in the end.
Was that because there was no problem? Or because everyone was worried about it and actually solved the problem? I don't think it's easy to tell the difference really.
Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?
#3No. It was not. I was a software developer in a large US Bank at the time. We had already dealt with it years ago for critical systems. All the banks had.
Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?
#4From 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 well into the 2000's (I don't know about now but it wouldn't shock me).
There was a decent influx of older devs using the media hype as a way to get nice consulting dollars, nothing wrong with that, but in the end the problem and associated fix was not really a major technical hurdle, except for a few cases. It is also important to understand a lot of systems were not in a SQL databases at the time, many were in ISAM, Pic, dBase (ouch), dbm's (essentially NoSql before NoSql hype) or custom db formats (like flat files etc) that required entire databases to be rewritten, or migrated to new solutions.
My 2 cents, it was a real situation that if ignored could have been a major economic crisis, most companies were addressing it in various ways in plenty of time but the media latched on to a set of high profile companies/government systems that were untouched and hyped it. If you knew any Cobol or could work a Vax or IBM mainframe you could bank some decent money. I was mainly doing new dev work but I did get involved in fixing a number of older code bases, mainly on systems in non-popular languages or on different hardware/OS because I have a knack for that and had experience on most server/mainframe architectures you could name at that time.
Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?
#5I was working at a telecommunications startup in 1999. They were founded in 1997. A big part of what I was doing was fixing Y2K bugs.
That said, none of the bugs would have been critical to the operations of the services. Everything was in the billing systems and I think if unfixed it would have been more of a reputation hit than anything.
Also, "begs the question" doesn't mean what you think it means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?
#6Just imagine if no one had ever lifted a finger to fix any of the bugs. We only talk about it being a scam because everyone collectively did such a great job mitigating it in time.
Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?
#7I was working at a telecommunications startup in 1999. They were founded in 1997. A big part of what I was doing was fixing Y2K bugs. That said, none of the bugs would have been critical to the operations of the services. Everything was in the billing systems and I think if unfixed it would have been more of a reputation hit than anything. Also, "begs the question" doesn't mean what you think it means. https://en.wik…
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Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?
#8I was working at a telecommunications startup in 1999. They were founded in 1997. A big part of what I was doing was fixing Y2K bugs. That said, none of the bugs would have been critical to the operations of the services. Everything was in the billing systems and I think if unfixed it would have been more of a reputation hit than anything. Also, "begs the question" doesn't mean what you think it means. https://en.wik…
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Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?
#9I was working at a telecommunications startup in 1999. They were founded in 1997. A big part of what I was doing was fixing Y2K bugs. That said, none of the bugs would have been critical to the operations of the services. Everything was in the billing systems and I think if unfixed it would have been more of a reputation hit than anything. Also, "begs the question" doesn't mean what you think it means. https://en.wik…
Personally, I've given up on begging the question. It just means "raises" now. The descriptivists always win in the end.
Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?
#10I have always wondered the same thing. I came to the conclusion that it's pretty difficult to determine that. I lived and worked as a software developer through the Y2K "crisis" (although I wasn't working on solving the crisis myself). Everyone was very worried about it. Nothing really went wrong in the end. Was that because there was no problem? Or because everyone was worried about it and actually solved the proble…
It's only hard to tell if you don't talk to the developers who were working in the late 90s.