this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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Showerthoughts
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The Y2K issue wasn't just a scare though. If the Devs and IT in general didn't had a strategy to overcome that ridiculous windows issue, things could have go bad. Media did media things and pushed it to a world ending scenario though.
It wasn't Windows, as someone else already explained, but yeah general media spread misinformation as usual when it comes to technology.
I work in IT and I was there, it was a serious problem that, if not fixed, would have indeed ended up in worldwide disaster, but we knew exactly what it was many years earlier, and exactly how to fix it, and we did so nothing actually happened obviously.
Media spread fear for nothing, instead of accurately reporting the situation and all the hark work IT people were doing all over the world to make sure everything would be fine.
In a way, the media hype was not completely bad. It helped ensuring there was budget to fix all those systems.
I'm pretty sure that it wasn't Windows that was the main offender, but instead legacy systems of all kinds made since 1970, where people were not expecting for their programs to run for more than 30 years.
Surprise! Businesses don't care whether the code is old, as long as it works - so that data type you store the year in only held two characters, and hard-coded the 19 onto it.
1999 would be written as 99. 19 + 99 = 1999 = computers were happy.
2000 would be written as 00. 19 + 00 = 1900 = computers went to shit
Yeah good explanation. I was too young to had any further knowledge about this issue way back and only saw it manifesting when I had to adjust my windows 95 clock :)
Next doom and gloom scenario is 2038, when poorly maintained *nix systems will think it's Jan 1st, 1970.
I'll be pushing 68. Hopefully retired or dead by then.
... I'll probably still be working, though...
Eh, it only being an issue for 32-bit systems will hopefully help. But of course somebody will still be running that in 15 years.
And even then, 64-bit time for 32-bit systems is already a thing that's being implemented specifically to avoid this.
Lots of financial institutions are still using software programmed with Cobol. My father graduated with a software engineering degree for Cobol in the mid-1970s. My company provides external API for customers who still use green screen terminals. Of course there will be people running 32-bit systems. And I'm sure there will be well-paid jobs for fixing any date overflow on those systems.
It was definitely more than DOS and Windows, it was programs written on all kinds of platforms, from Unix to mainframes and more. That's also a key point, the operating systems were just part of the problem, it was the software found banking, industrial control, and all the things
Preparedness paradox - if effective action is taken to mitigate a potential disaster, the avoided danger will be perceived as having been much less serious because of the limited damage actually caused.
Very relevant in the context of COVID - "we're not seeing spikes, why are we still locking down and masking up?!" - and a significant driving factor feeding into those radical anti-COVID-protection "no new normal" ideologies.
I mean in the media sense. There are some actually bad consequences. But the hype on here feels sensationalized.
It's weirdly comforting knowing media hyperbole isn't new or unique.
Added what?
I think he meant to reply to the main thread (which he did with the same comment) but didnt delete this (or maybe it didnt federate?)
yes, i deleted it and it still shows "DELETED" when I view it 😅