I’m a programmer… and ended up tasked with being sure that our products were “Y2K compliant”… in the course of which, I did quite a bit of research about what could possibly go wrong. MOST of the important fixes simply kicked the can down the road by deciding that any two-digit year less than 50 would be in the 21st century, any greater would be in the 20th (so ‘87’ would be 1987 but ‘12’ would be 2012). Simple. Robust. Fast. And of course, long term wrong, but it gave them another 50 years to fix it.
Spouse (who worked in a hospital) and I stayed awake until after midnight at her work area to be sure. Not a twitch.
BUT: If people had NOT fixed things up, all those worst case issues might indeed have happened. Good thing humans are willing to fix problems when there’s almost no time left to make the fix.
I’m a programmer… and ended up tasked with being sure that our products were “Y2K compliant”… in the course of which, I did quite a bit of research about what could possibly go wrong. MOST of the important fixes simply kicked the can down the road by deciding that any two-digit year less than 50 would be in the 21st century, any greater would be in the 20th (so ‘87’ would be 1987 but ‘12’ would be 2012). Simple. Robust. Fast. And of course, long term wrong, but it gave them another 50 years to fix it.
Spouse (who worked in a hospital) and I stayed awake until after midnight at her work area to be sure. Not a twitch.
BUT: If people had NOT fixed things up, all those worst case issues might indeed have happened. Good thing humans are willing to fix problems when there’s almost no time left to make the fix.