[Coda]

Originally Posted by Den

I remember being confused about Y2K. like, what was supposed to happen?

Y2k was a self-defeating prophecy. BECAUSE it was so hyped up, it GOT fixed, so it DIDN'T blow up. Of course this means that laypeople will look back and wonder what the big deal was, but we software engineers understand just how much effort went into making sure the public could afford to feel that way.

The biggest problem with Y2k was that LOTS of systems stored dates with just two digits for the year. So in 1999, a system would know that I was 17 years old, because 99 - 82 = 17. But that same code would have thought I was -82 years old in 2000 -- certainly not old enough to drive or vote or open a bank account or take out a loan or sign a contract or get a job!

Another possible issue: Suppose something has to be processed every day after 1:00 AM, but only once per day. A common way to do this would be to store the last time the computer performed that task, and if it hasn't been, say, 23 hours since last time yet, then it's not time yet. Well, 12/31/99 01:00 AM rolls around, no problem. Now 01/01/00 01:00 AM rolls around... oh wait, last time we did it was in the future, obviously we don't need to do anything!

Whoops.