The Millenium Bug

[mumofoneAloneandwell]

Do you remember this?

I am listening to Radio 1 and they've just brought it up and it unlocked a memory 😅

Never panned out but I remember my dm being quite stressed about it (I was about 9)

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/how-do-computers-get-bugs

Looking at the state of the world, I kind of understand the Y2K fears at times

The millenium bug wasn't a bug. It was a known problem which was identified long in advance and a lot of work was done to prevent it from causing any problems.

IT people I know find the way people talk about the Millennium bug really frustrating. There’s a perception that it was all an unnecessary panic which turned out to be misplaced, whereas in fact it was a genuine problem that people worked hard on and successfully fixed.

It wasn't a bug, it was a known feature that needing upgrading/checking to make sure that computers could handle dates with a year of 2000 and not incorrectly assume they referred to 1900. That's all it was.

It "didn't pan out" because people like me worked on lots of projects to check and correct systems where it might have been a problem!

My father worked on this for years. As did many in the industry, to prevent it being a problem.

Somewhat frustratingly, having worked tirelessly across many industries to successfully resolve it, he saw the media and general public reacting like it was some made up scaremongering non-event.

Whereas it was a real issue that was successfully fixed.

Like most things it was totally overhyped by the media at the time who mentioned all sorts of "could" and "might" scenarios which scared the bejeezus out of some people like my 80 something grandmother who was convinced every electronic item in her home would suddenly stop working!

That's a bit insulting to the people like me who were working for a couple of years on upgrading/replacing systems were it definitely would have been a big problem.

I remember being at a friend’s house for new year. We were 15, totally caught up in the hype. Went outside for midnight expecting the sky to fall in. One house alarm went off at midnight (could have been coincidence). Very anti climactic!

Having read about it since, I’ve learned what pps have said - it was anticlimactic because so many people worked so hard on it.

I remember it, I worked bloody hard to prevent it being a problem. I worked for one if the big mobile networks at the time and we worked for years to ensure every tiny issue was considered.

Adding my voice to the others on here saying it didnt become a problem because people worked bloody hard to sort it out. For once it was a case of effective fire prevention officers rather than highly visible fire fighters.

@countrygirl99 please accept my apologies I didn't mean to insult you or anyone working on the situation.

I was working in the water industry at the time. It was a massive job for my colleagues in IT to check that everything was compliant. From the computers in the 24 hour control room, to the pumps at reservoirs and pumping stations, the call centre technology, the communications between control room and field staff (we used mobile phones but also had 2 way radio).

I worked that night in the call centre handling operational enquiries and customer emergencies.

Agree with this and with many above.

I was working in software at the time. We had a massive project to go through all our source code to update any 2 digit years to 4 digit ones to stop any problems. Our software wasn't infrastructure or critically important. I would expect any company with more important software would have been very much 'on it'.

The potential problems didn't happen because the industry took it seriously.

I spent 1997-99 working on the rewrite of a massive computer system which wouldn’t have handled the dates of the new century. You have to remember that many of these systems were written in the 70s and 80s when computer space was incredibly expensive and every byte or bit counted so dates were held in the briefest format possible.

Yup. A friend of mine earned enough money updating/replacing old COBOL code on the run-up to the millennium that he was able to retire afterwards.

The Millenium bug is a perfect example of why good IT programmers and maintenance always feels unnecessary. Because when it works and is done right, it feels like nothing has happened. This, despite titanic works happening behind the scenes to make it actually work…if the works to rectify the MB hadn’t happened, it would have been catastrophic.

Can you imagine if it happened now? The conspiracy theories would be so much worse. It would probably somehow be split into a right / left issue, with people on social media going on about how ‘big IT’ are trying to control us all…

They would have had planes grounded, trains stopped, banks crashing had thousands of people not stepped up and worked on fixing it.
I was in the industry it was a busy time

Saved us a fortune. We flew to the USA on 1st January, on an almost empty plane, had the run of theme parks in Florida, actually being encouraged to go around rides multiple times, shopping in empty arcades, worked brilliantly for us, even the weather was great!

Although I don’t doubt for a second that it would have caused problems, I’m not very technically minded, so can someone please explain to me exactly what sort of problems could have happened and why? I understand the clocks resetting to 1900 but don’t get how this could ground planes etc. Genuine question.

I remember this. I was 11 at the time. I think the media overhyped it and tried to get everyone into a panic. I remember news stories at the time of people panic buying bread and milk as they thought the world was going to end 😅

I remember it well. I was the member of staff who had to go into the office on New Year's Day to switch on all the computers in my area to ensure they were working OK. I think I did 3 hours and was paid triple time, so I didn't mind at all!

Software crashing when encountering a negative number but needed a positive one (eg this year minus last year) is an obvious one.
Software crashing (ie just giving up) in an uncontrolled way is never good.

Anything checking how old people are: this year 00 minus year of birth 55 means you are negative 55 years old. Crash!

If the computer system thinks its 1900 and not 2000 then it may potentially be looking at the wrong information when making other decisions. So possible that air traffic control might not be showing today's information, whatever that might need to be - maybe weather, flight schedules etc etc.

I think it was something to do with computers being unable to calculate the time that anything would take because they would think it was 1900 instead of 2000, so for instance, a plane itinerary which started on 1st January 2000 would confuse the computer into thinking it had been in the air for 100 years and completely be unable to cope with it! I may be wrong though!

As many PPs have said, working in IT at the time, we spent a long time preparing for it to make absolutely sure everything ran smoothly. Our company was a banking software provider and tbh the previous years introduction of the Euro was an even bigger problem for us, but no one seemed to realise how much of a potential issue that was. 🤷‍♀️