Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: 9 AM and all's well on 9-9-99

Author:Ken Anderson
Posted:9/8/1999; 3:19:48 PM
Topic:9 AM and all's well on 9-9-99
Msg #:10772 (In response to 10770)
Prev/Next:10771 / 10773

Hi Zac,

Computer science is roughly 50 years old, and software engineers must deal with 50 year old legacy systems. In 100 years, software engineers will have to deal with 150 year old legacy systems.

The whole point of the Y2K problem is that software engineers didn't think that there code would be used in 1999 and yet here we are scrambling to correct that code. So the answer to your question, "How realistic is this to actually occur?", is 100%.

Now the real question to ask, is "how global will its effects be?"

That remains to be seen.

Another thing to consider: 9/9/99 was also used in some systems to indicate that a person is deceased! So, while systems may not crash, some people may get letters from systems that now think they are dead! Imagine calling a company and saying "Hi, your computer thinks I'm dead, but...I'm not dead!"

:-)

Ken

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:52:30 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.