Reply to: Y2K - 10 years after

[SantaClaus]

I heard it again yesterday from some pseudo-intellectual numpty on the radio - "We wasted £4.5bn on something that never happened..."

I wonder why it never happened....

I also claim the first Y2K failure - in 1998 the CMS wouldn't release a piece of code because it looked 18 months ahead to check release dates. Snag is, the piece of code was the one needed to patch the CMS itself.

Luckily we had a spare copy on the DR kit.

Of course, if said numpty was that intellectual, he would have told us at the time that £4.5bn would be wasted, not 10 years later

Dont ya just love analysts/self proclaimed experts.

[Board Game Geek]

I wrote a date-checking subroutine for a system library in the late 70s that had to be date tested up to the year 3000. It passed, I am pleased to report:

Nice to see a proper programmer who thinks ahead.

I once worked in a company where we hired a programmer to integrate product barcodes in to the stock database.

It was a nightmare from day 1.

Her brief was to write an integration between the barcode scanning software which would update the database with the product scanned. Qty, model, etc.

We gave her access to the Server DB and left her to it.

Day 3 she surfaces from the Server Room, saying that she cannot export the Foxpro database to a test db to take home (WTF ?).

She convinces the IT Manager to buy her a SCSI card and tape drive, then takes home a copy of a backup tape.

She now works from home, for the same amount we negotiated for the job. So we now have no control or even if she is just stringing the days along.

2 weeks later she calls up. It's done.

She comes to install it on a test PC. Fails on the first run. Then the next, then the next. She explains that our Barcode system is not the same as the one she coded for. Bar 39 or something. Could we upgrade ?

4 weeks later, and several thousand pounds, the factory is now ready for Code 39.

She runs it and it fails. During the change to Code 39, we had to add new fields to the master db. We told her this several times.

She goes away for another 2 weeks and returns with a working version. We test, it works, all wonderful.

3 days later it breaks, not recognising a new code for a new product. Apparently, we cannot just add new codes, since "The system doesn't like it". Oh well, that's R&D closed down then !

We kind of expected that she would have figured that out !

With costs now running at 25K, we canned the project and went back to recording on an Excel spreadsheet and someone manually updating the Master DB.

Programmers was a dirty word in our factory after that, and we never used them again. We found other ways around what we wanted to do.

Update : I was almost tasked with taking over the project. I said "No Way. I'm happy doing the cabling, phones and fixing the PC's and Servers thank you very much".

[malvolio]

When I was at college in 1981 the senior lecturer taught us about the Y2K problem and said "There is code running that was written in the 1960s. Code you write may still be running in 2000. So make sure it can handle 4 digit dates and damn the cost." What makes me cross is that all those bone-idle, lazy tossers that caused the problems with tulipe code got away with it.

I wrote a date-checking subroutine for a system library in the late 70s that had to be date tested up to the year 3000. It passed, I am pleased to report, but I did point out that the date reporting code itself that drove it - a standard ICL subroutine - hadn't been.

Incidentally, the leap year check was done without using a number 4, or a divide. I leave that as a test for the .NET brigade...

[RichardCranium]

Y2K? Biggest ******* con ever.

I fixed a logistics firm's invoice / confirmation system which could not handle Y2K dates.

We found problems with Oracle Financials.

We found shedloads of problems in First Software's Housing system.

There was loads of maintenance scripts written by ICL that were going to fail that we fixed.

An Executive Information System that had bought by PWC from a specialist software house was written off and thrown away because it would be too big a job to make it work with Y2K dates.

There are some other trivial systems I looked at too and fixed.

It was not a con. Some consultancies made a killing, but if the work had not been done, January 2000 would have been a nightmare and the following few months an utter shambles.


When I was at college in 1981 the senior lecturer taught us about the Y2K problem and said "There is code running that was written in the 1960s. Code you write may still be running in 2000. So make sure it can handle 4 digit dates and damn the cost." What makes me cross is that all those bone-idle, lazy tossers that caused the problems with tulipe code got away with it.

[BolshieBastard]

Y2K? Biggest ******* con ever. Never did understand why so many people were taken in about the hype, planes falling out of the sky, submarines never coming back up, traffic lights not working etc etc.

******* joke.

[Sysman]

I heard it again yesterday from some pseudo-intellectual numpty on the radio - "We wasted £4.5bn on something that never happened..."

I wonder why it never happened....

Indeed.

I also claim the first Y2K failure - in 1998 the CMS wouldn't release a piece of code because it looked 18 months ahead to check release dates. Snag is, the piece of code was the one needed to patch the CMS itself.

Luckily we had a spare copy on the DR kit.

I found other weird things, such as the program which didn't even need to look at the date which fell over.

But of course in May 1997 there was a 10K day bug in X11 - it only hit programs which stored the number of days since 1-Jan-1970 in a string which was too short. Not a Y2K bug as such, but certainly date related.

[malvolio]

I heard it again yesterday from some pseudo-intellectual numpty on the radio - "We wasted £4.5bn on something that never happened..."

I wonder why it never happened....

I also claim the first Y2K failure - in 1998 the CMS wouldn't release a piece of code because it looked 18 months ahead to check release dates. Snag is, the piece of code was the one needed to patch the CMS itself.

Luckily we had a spare copy on the DR kit.

[FarmerPalmer]

went to bed early and was in client co at 6am for an 8 hour shift ... just incase.
£1k for surfing the web for 8 hours.

[Zippy]

Spent the previous 6 months testing all the software and was 'on call' on the night. Funnily enough bugger all happened.

[RichardCranium]

I was working for a public sector client.

We got bugger all.

The supplier charged £10ks for loads of cover, then crossed their fingers and didn't provide any.

The bastards got away with it because we had spent the preceding 15 months testing and fixing the sub-suppliers software.



I was so naïve in those days.

[Doggy Styles]

That night I watched Blair in all his pomp and glory at the Dome on TV. He was doing an auld lang syne holding hands with a very unimpressed-looking queen.

But at the stroke of midnight I was probably watching Mr Methane do the count-down in farts, with puffs of talcumn powder from his up-turned arse.

[lje]

Was a permie then. Got paid £1000 to turn up at 10am. I left at noon after having had a free curry for lunch (all be it early). Lovely.

[singhr]

We were the masters of the universe then

[Sysman]

Told the clients that everything would be ok and not to worry about it.

Jan 1st was a Sat, so our office was closed for the weekend anyway, and I'm sure Monday 3rd Jan was a Bank Holiday in lieu.

So we rolled in to work on the 4th, and by then it had all blown over.

No need on our part to charge silly money for something that didn't happen or may happen.

WHS. We started 2 years previously, got dedicated test systems in, et cetera et cetera. and come the bug day we simply knew that we wouldn't get called out in the early hours of the 1st.

The boss was the only one getting standby money, but he got that year round anyway (quite a good number if you could swing it; it all added up).

[Board Game Geek]

Told the clients that everything would be ok and not to worry about it.

Jan 1st was a Sat, so our office was closed for the weekend anyway, and I'm sure Monday 3rd Jan was a Bank Holiday in lieu.

So we rolled in to work on the 4th, and by then it had all blown over.

No need on our part to charge silly money for something that didn't happen or may happen.