181–190 of 385 posts
As a home user, I had software on my old computer (80286 XT from end of 80s) which ended up saying we were in the year 00. Don't remember if time/date was otherwise correct. I do realize it could've been a lot worse if it were not thanks to the many efforts of people in the tech industry. And in case you wonder: I would bet the same is going to happen with regards to 32-bit and 2038.
We are lucky that the Y2k issue was so understandable by the public. I doubt we will have such luck addressing the Y2038 problem.
>We are lucky that the Y2k issue was so understandable by the public. As someone who was forced to spend Y2K in a "prepped" cabin on the side of a mountain with two years of supplies buried underneath, I think you might overestimate the quality of the public's response to Y2K. The public did not maturely understand that software needed to be updated and everything was OK. There was some real panic out there. It was a…
Yes, it was a real crisis. This revisionist history that some are now saying it was no big deal. It was a big deal and many people spent many hours in the 90's assuring that the financial side of every business continued. I am starting to get a bit offended at the discounting of the effort put in by developers around the world. Just because the news didn't understand the actual nature of the crisis (Y2K = primarily f…
When people don't understand something, they can't tell the difference between a lot of effort to make something work smoothly and "it's clearly not that big of a deal"
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I love these kinds of war stories of incredibly capable people. That was great planning for the unknowns.
I've worked in silicon valley for the past 11 years, in startups as well as two so-called FAANG companies. There are a lot of brilliant people out here. So that is well known. What's not well known is this: there are pockets of brilliant people elsewhere, including Bentonville, Arkansas. Especially in the years running up to 2000, I had the pleasure and honor of working with some of the most talented people in the wo…
I would argue the caliber of people I worked with there, from no name universities, or known names, but not equivalent to many people (Georgia Tech vs Berkeley, say), was generally better there. It of course varied person to person, but the teams were generally stronger, senior devs were more senior, juniors tended to be hungrier to learn, etc. Maybe it was just the lack of the FAANGs sucking up the best people.
Imagine having to pay 100 years in interest or late fees.
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>We are lucky that the Y2k issue was so understandable by the public. As someone who was forced to spend Y2K in a "prepped" cabin on the side of a mountain with two years of supplies buried underneath, I think you might overestimate the quality of the public's response to Y2K. The public did not maturely understand that software needed to be updated and everything was OK. There was some real panic out there. It was a…
May I ask why you were “forced” to this? Y2K was the only “apocalypse panic” I can recall in 50 years (not counting the Cold War “The Day After” nuclear Armageddon) and I never knew anyone that considered 2012 to be other than a joke.
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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.
It's not IT/software, it's in every field, it's called shitwork, that you don't get credit for, but catch hell if it isn't. e.g. "what do we pay all these janitors for when this place looks spotless?"
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.
As sibling comments have noted: these systems are an exceedingly complex pile of separate but interdependent pieces.
The rollover from 31-Dec-1999 to 1-Jan-2000 had happened thousands of times before the actual day came. Some piece/assumption/etc had been overlooked.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love these kinds of war stories of incredibly capable people. That was great planning for the unknowns.
I've worked in silicon valley for the past 11 years, in startups as well as two so-called FAANG companies. There are a lot of brilliant people out here. So that is well known. What's not well known is this: there are pockets of brilliant people elsewhere, including Bentonville, Arkansas. Especially in the years running up to 2000, I had the pleasure and honor of working with some of the most talented people in the wo…