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Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

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Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#21

Post by JdeBP »

TomMckenny wrote: post #17
dhosek wrote: post #5

I 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…

Don't even get me started on "epicenter"

You should stop reading this discussion here, for your own peace of mind. Because there's someone writing quotation marks and then immediately writing "quote-unquote" only a few bullet points ahead. (-:

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#22

Post by wefarrell »

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…

It a shame that we as engineers can't just say "this maintenance is required to fix this known issue. It's not a huge deal but will cause trouble if it's not dealt with". Instead we have to be all doom and gloom and tell management that the company/world will end.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#23

Post by arethuza »

nsxwolf wrote: post #6

Just 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.

There is a certain class of work in the IT/software world that is utterly thankless - nothing goes wrong and people wonder what they pay you for, something goes wrong and the very same questions get asked.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#24

Post by vidanay »

TomMckenny wrote: post #17
dhosek wrote: post #5

I 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…

Don't even get me started on "epicenter"

That's the word for when a WWE star enters the stadium with loud music and fireworks, right?

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#25

Post by slantyyz »

mathw wrote: post #10
adrianmsmith wrote: post #2

I 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.

>> It's only hard to tell if you don't talk to the developers who were working in the late 90s.

I think you mean "working ON it". Talking to developers as a broad group from that time wouldn't necessarily produce any useful information.

The person you replied to was himself a developer working in the late 90s. During the late 90s, I talked to a lot of developers, but only a small percentage of them were on Y2K jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#26

Post by jbay808 »

GoldenMonkey wrote: post #3

No. 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.

Doesn't that fall into the "real but well handled" category then?

The OP can only be asking about comparisons to a hypothetical world where nobody dealt with it for critical systems.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#27

Post by unilynx »

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…

> I don't know about now but it wouldn't shock me

We'll be up for a few Y2K bugs at the start of every decade because 'year += year https://www.pymnts.com/news/payment-methods/2020/new-years-b...

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#28

Post by kangnkodos »

nsxwolf wrote: post #6

Just 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.

Yes. It's like if you're on a ship and you see an iceberg in the distance. If you shout iceberg, and change the direction just a little, no crisis. Without that small change, big problem.

People were talking about Y2K years ahead of time. Lots of changes to code were made. A few little bugs slipped through, but not many, and everyone knew how to fix them. No crisis. Without the many code changes, big problem.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#30

Post by dwheeler »

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 things don't work out you just spend more time and money, but there was no additional time that anyone could give.

The Y2K bug did not become a crisis only because people literally spent tens of billions of dollars in effort to fix it. And in the end, everything kept working, so a lot of people thought it wasn't a crisis at all. Complete nonsense.

Yes, it's true that all software occasionally has bugs. But when all the software fails at the same time, a lot of the backup systems simultaneously fail, and you lose the infrastructure to fix things.

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