Happy 25th anniversary to Y2K not wrecking the world and causing a lot of people to assume that the lack of a disaster meant that all the advance mitigation we did to prevent chaos was a waste of time and therefore we should never again come together as a society to collectively work for the better - ThreadSky

jparish.bsky.social • 58 days ago

Happy 25th anniversary to Y2K not wrecking the world and causing a lot of people to assume that the lack of a disaster meant that all the advance mitigation we did to prevent chaos was a waste of time and therefore we should never again come together as a society to collectively work for the better

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marthap.bsky.social•57 days ago

Of course, just like every computer class I took, the one in the fall of 1999 was COBOL. Immediately useless. I also managed to take MS DOS the semester before it was made obsolete. The joys of being a non-trad student.

clubneon.com•57 days ago

I took a COBOL class in 1998. We actually talked about writing Y2K compliant code. I half-thought about applying for jobs to update legacy software, but I hated that language so much.

marthap.bsky.social•56 days ago

Only took the class as I needed another credit. No idea it was a coding class. It was called ethics and logic. No description that I ever saw. The best advice I ever got for it was to look at it like a recipe. Certain steps done in the correct order - like creaming butter, then adding sugar - etc.

clubneon.com•56 days ago

I love writing code, and had taught myself in elementary school. It's weird, I should have liked a language that required things to be precisely lined up. It's like saying in order to cream the butter the mixer has to be exactly 18 inches from the edge of the counter.

theburnham.bsky.social•57 days ago

We should’ve let all the computers in Nebraska totally melt down to prove the threat was real.

laephis.bsky.social•57 days ago

As someone who was on the front lines back in 1999, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this post.

petersealy.bsky.social•57 days ago

My first programming class was in 1978, and the instructor made a big deal about making sure to include the century in dates.

So people were warning about this for at least two decades, and it still somehow became a last minute crisis. I think there’s another forgotten lesson there too.

gkalinkat.bsky.social•58 days ago

I genuinely wish our grandchildren can talk about the fearmongering of today like this in 50 years

phoequinox.bsky.social•58 days ago

Up until fairly recently, I was one of the folks who just assumed Y2K was a case of media fear-mongering after nothing ended up happening. So at least the word is spreading to smoothbrains like me.

anodynesix.bsky.social•58 days ago

It's a good thing that the hole in the ozone layer decided to stop being a growing concern.

drewwise.bsky.social•58 days ago

I miss the Y2K computer bug insect clipart

jcpxdesigns.bsky.social•56 days ago

My dad and and a bunch of engineers he worked with did an insane amount of OT helping preemptively resolve potential Y2K bug issues and it really sucks seeing people think that nothing happened for no reason at all!

pandaramble.bsky.social•58 days ago

Our hand-me-down 386 at the time got confused and changed the date to 1st Jan 1980, but it could easily go to 2036 in BIOS, so I'd say it was future proofed.

jparish.bsky.social•57 days ago

Consumer gear problems weren’t the issue so much as legacy systems running countless government, financial, travel, and medical concerns

pandaramble.bsky.social•57 days ago

Sorry, I didn't mean it like an explanation of Y2K, just an anecdote of very outdated stuff that had just a single issue.

One thing tech didn't learn from Y2K is keeping old stuff for compatibility for years: majority still run outdated "do not touch" code, just like the one on mainframes then.

pandaramble.bsky.social•57 days ago

Aw snap, I forgot the "😅" in this post and this really reads as something said completely seriously 🤦‍♂️ sorry!

Any important server/mainframe changing a date to a wrong year for even a second would be a complete disaster.

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