It's hard to believe.

[MailGuru]

It's hard to believe that 24 years ago, the world firmly believed that when the dates went from Dec 31, 1999 to Jan 1, 2000 all computers would stop working, the banking industry would collapse, planes would fall from the skies, etc. (Y2K)

 

[gordo]

It's hard to believe that 24 years ago, the world firmly believed that when the dates went from Dec 31, 1999 to Jan 1, 2000 all computers would stop working, the banking industry would collapse, planes would fall from the skies, etc. (Y2K)

They also thought that the new millennium began on January 1, 2000 - one year too early.

 

[MacTwidget]

This was my favorite ad of that time period.
H.A.L. Y2K Macintosh commercial

 

[Ynot_UK]

Being contrarian, we purposely waited until Spring 2000 to purchase new telephone and IT systems. They could have been a waste of money at the heavily inflated late 1999 prices and indeed not needed, since the world was going to end at 00:00 01/01/00

 

[chriscozi]

And imagine my surprise at the news and punditry responses.
As a computer nerd, just as a test changed the date on my macs and pc's to 2000 to see what happened, everything was fine.
And all the geeky blogs I read laughed and said 'stupid dweebs.'

 

[MailGuru]

Hey! Smile when you say 'stupid dweebs". As an independent computer programmer about 2-years prior to that time, I made good money rewriting software routines and converting data from a 6-digit date (xx/xx/xx) to an 8-digit date (xx/xx/xxxx) so that aging routines worked properly.

Now, all software products will internally convert to an 8-digit date with the 4-digit century, regardless of how it is displayed on your data.

We learn from our mistakes...........(sometimes)

 

[chriscozi]

Hey! Smile when you say 'stupid dweebs". As an independent computer programmer about 2-years prior to that time, I made good money rewriting software routines and converting data from a 6-digit date (xx/xx/xx) to an 8-digit date (xx/xx/xxxx) so that aging routines worked properly.

Now, all software products will internally convert to an 8-digit date with the 4-digit century, regardless of how it is displayed on your data.

We learn from our mistakes...........(sometimes)

Ditto. We tested each mission critical system and fixed them.
You weren't one of the dweebs!

 

[MailGuru]

I guess what I kick myself in the butt for, is, our lack of foresight (myself included). You see, we were designing and maintaining databases, and, writing programs and full software systems during the 70's, 80's and 90's left and right. Just going our merry way, with a craftsman's pride in our work. All incorporating a 2-digit century in our dates.

It never dawned on us that there might be an issue when the most current 2-digit century date (00, 01, 02, etc.) is mathematically less than the older 2-digit century dates on file (87, 89, 91, etc.).

There's a lesson in there somewhere for all of us.

Oh well, just like in the printing business, any job worth doing once is worth doing twice after you've corrected the problem.