Why didn’t Y2K problem end the world?
In: Engineering
The problem was the worry that the change in date would cause problems for computer equipment – that older systems that only saved the date in a two digit format would throw an error when the date tried to count above the maximum value of ’99’, and would fail rather than rolling back to ’00’.
If this error happened somewhere important – the software running banking transactions for example, or coordinating the power grid – then there could be serious problems until it was repaired.
The reason nothing much actually happened? Ultimately because we were well prepared.
The problem had been long identified, so the majority of modern tech at that point was immune to the problem anyway – with the date being stored as four digits rather than two.
For the tech remaining, the hazards of the millenium’ bug were well broadcast, and we had all had plenty of time to test everything that needed testing, and patch anything that needed patched.
At midnight, everything ticked over correctly, and a lot of IT workers breathed a sigh of relief that they had done their job properly and fixed everything in advance, and everyone else questioned what the worry was about, as nothing actually happened…
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