Y2k was a real threat!
@RonElFran (1214)
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 2015 3:10pm CST
I just heard some pundit on TV talking about the upcoming interest rate hike by the Fed being the most overhyped event "since Y2k." When I hear that kind of thing, and this is not the first time I've heard it, I get slightly annoyed.
Why? Because Y2k was real. If you remember, the concern was that when 1999 changed over to 2000, many of the world's computers would go bonkers because they had been programmed using 2-digit year designations that would always refer to a date in the 20th century. Thus, if the date Jan 30, 2007 was entered, it would be stored as 01/30/07 and the computer would assume it meant 1907, not 2007.
Well, practically none of that upheaval took place, leaving ignorant pundits to assume the Y2k threat was overblown. But it wasn't! The reason computers didn't lose their minds on January 1, 2000 was because a lot of programmers and engineers, like me, worked very hard to get the problem fixed before that date. And we succeeded!
So, Y2k was real, and so was the mountain of hard work we put in to make sure you would never notice it.
Maybe we did our jobs too well.
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