Having watched another video saying Y2K wasn’t real - my standard clarification

[jonn_blanchard@retrochat.online]

Having watched another video saying Y2K wasn’t real - my standard clarification

Did the media blow the situation up? Yes
Was it a real issue? Also yes.

The reason not much happened was because hordes of developers worked tirelessly to fix systems, I know, I was one of them.

Trust me - stuff was going to break, I saw code for Banks, Hospitals and Mass transport and it was all going to fail

[andypiper@macaw.social]

@jonn_blanchard indeed - I was on call on 31/12/1999 just in case the Post Office datacentre in the Midlands had an issue, but we’d spent 2 years rebuilding the software infrastructure so that it wouldn’t!

[sverx@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@jonn_blanchard yep - I've been there too. Lots of bugged software around, and part of that was not even fixed properly, as the 'main' target was the Jan 1st 2000 but the 'secondary' issue of Y2K was the Feb 29th 2000 - and I saw code breaking in either or both cases (yes, at work I had a few softwares report Mar 1st 2000 the day before that... )

[kimota94@mas.to]

@jonn_blanchard Can confirm. I spent 2+ years of my 25-year career expanding date fields to include the century, among other changes, so that the bank I worked for wouldn’t fall into chaos when we crossed over New Year’s into 2000. Saying it was a fake crisis, when you know nothing about it, is just stupid. Please don’t be stupid, people.

[peteri@hachyderm.io]

@jonn_blanchard Martyn Thomas did a talk for Gresham college called "What really happened in Y2K"

He has good list of things that broke.

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2017-04-04-MartynThomas_Y2K-T.pdf

[nentuaby@wandering.shop]

@sverx I fixed two live Y2K bugs, and I started in the industry in 2007! (Banking software; they cropped up when a certain class of loans currently *maturing* started to be *originated* after 2000-1-1)

[sonic2k@oldbytes.space]

@jonn_blanchard
Of course it was real... lived through it. Had to work overtime to make sure things went smoothly. I was in telecoms at the time.

These videos are the same as the flat-earth ones. Not worth anyone's time or bandwidth.

[float13@masto.hackers.town]

@jonn_blanchard

I was at a movie theater and the (physical actual) film broke or burned halfway through the movie, and everyone freaked out for a second... So even the fully analogue systems were on edge that night

[nuintari@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@jonn_blanchard I literally had this conversation not an hour ago. It wasn't an issue because we fixed it before doomsday.

I remember back in 1999, I knew a guy who ran a public access show about Y2K prepping. He was so full of shit, but he was good looking and charismatic, so people listened to him.

I knew so many people who prepped HARD, bought trucks and trailers(for mobility), guns guns guns, stockpiled food and water. It was nuts and pathetic.

And then some of us woke up that morning and enjoyed our coffee.

[divverent@misskey.de]

@jonn_blanchard@retrochat.online I had the probably funniest Y2K bug. A video store software called "Videka" jumped from 1999 straight to 2001. Quick testing showed it did consider it a leap year, which gave hope.

Some messing around and I saw a string like

19941995199619971998199920012002200320042005

in the binary... so yeah, I binary patched it to the correct sequence and it worked perfectly.

I suspect it was made in QuickBasic and for some odd reason had logic like

Year$ = MID("19941995...2005", Year% * 4 + 1, 4)

for whatever dumb reason...

Soon after video stores became irrelevant.

[mikefromlfe@cupoftea.social]

@nuintari @jonn_blanchard
Yes! I was working over midnight at a major hospital and then.... nothing bad happened. (The joy of being a senior in the system)

Nothing happening was due to all the planning and work that lots of professionals put in in advance of Y2K

[nuintari@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@MikeFromLFE @jonn_blanchard

I was with my girl, literally the first thing I did in 2000 was have an orgasm The last thing I did in 1999 was the same.

[drwho@masto.hackers.town]

@jonn_blanchard <weeps in frustration...>

[decadecity@hachyderm.io]

@jonn_blanchard As a rookie field engineer going around patching stuff I wasn't working on anything as big as banks, hospitals or mass transport but I did see a lot of small businesses that would have been crippled by the loss of their IT capabilities.

[bencotterill@mastodon.social]

@jonn_blanchard @Binder My dad spent that night looking at screens. One thing that went wrong was the urinalysis checker in a toilet at a nuclear power station.

[cynblogger@sfba.social]

@jonn_blanchard
I had the world’s best programmer who started planning 24 years ahead. ️

[resuna@ohai.social]

@peteri @jonn_blanchard

And that doesn't address the y2k failures that happened basically every 5 years after 2000 as software where the problem was "solved" by redefining the rollover date using a window rolled over.

[cj@dragonscave.space]

@jonn_blanchard @Fragglemuppet If you put the work in up front then it always looks too easy. We just rolled out a huge project across multiple states with no issues at all. I don't think people realize how amazing this was because we just made it look too easy. It was three years of hard work with a one year sprint at the end.

[alsvha@sunny.garden]

@jonn_blanchard I actually think if the media hadn't blown the situation up as they did, I'm not sure so many would have actually cared about fixing it either.

It definitely was real, but conspiracy theories exists in all walks of life, so I guess it's just par for the course that (some) people doubt Y2K.

[svelmoe@hachyderm.io]

@jonn_blanchard I work on a live project which still contain handling of 2 digit year.

Stuff would have blown up if not done correctly.