Fond memories of the milleninum bug. [modified]
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Talking about the year 2038[^] bug brings back an anecdote that happened to me in the nineties. I was working for EDS at the time, and my boss had tasked me to present an estimate for an overhaul of all the programs at a large bank. The total bill was going to amount to millions of dollars, so understandably, the chairman of the bank was sitting in on this meeting. At one point in the meeting he interrupted me, and said "young man," (they don't call me that any more) "are you telling me that moving from 2 to 4 digits is going to cost me half a year profits? In that case I'd better be safe than sorry, could you rework your estimate to move to 5 digits?". The CIO grew red in the face as he was trying to prevent ejecting his coffee through his nostrils, and I was frantically searching for words as I tried to explain to him that it was unlikely that his programs (or his bank for that matter) were unlikely to be around in the year 9999.
modified on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 2:32 AM
Michel Godfroid wrote:
At one point in the meeting he interrupted me, and said "young man," (they don't call me that any more) "are you telling me that moving from 2 to 4 digits is going to cost me half a year profits? In that case I'd better be safe than sorry, could you rework your estimate to move to 5 digits?". The CIO grew red in the face as he was trying to prevent ejecting his coffee through his nostrils, and I was frantically searching for words as I tried to explain to him that it was unlikely that his programs (or his bank for that matter) were unlikely to be around in the year 9999.
The fact is that the whole mess happened because the COBOL guys who wrote the rubbish didn't realise their code would be used beyond (19)99.
Cheers, Vikram. (Got my troika of CCCs!)
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Michel Godfroid wrote:
At one point in the meeting he interrupted me, and said "young man," (they don't call me that any more) "are you telling me that moving from 2 to 4 digits is going to cost me half a year profits? In that case I'd better be safe than sorry, could you rework your estimate to move to 5 digits?". The CIO grew red in the face as he was trying to prevent ejecting his coffee through his nostrils, and I was frantically searching for words as I tried to explain to him that it was unlikely that his programs (or his bank for that matter) were unlikely to be around in the year 9999.
The fact is that the whole mess happened because the COBOL guys who wrote the rubbish didn't realise their code would be used beyond (19)99.
Cheers, Vikram. (Got my troika of CCCs!)
Vikram A Punathambekar wrote:
the COBOL guys who wrote the rubbish didn't realise their code would be used beyond (19)99.
Perhaps they were just being optimistic.
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Michel Godfroid wrote:
At one point in the meeting he interrupted me, and said "young man," (they don't call me that any more) "are you telling me that moving from 2 to 4 digits is going to cost me half a year profits? In that case I'd better be safe than sorry, could you rework your estimate to move to 5 digits?". The CIO grew red in the face as he was trying to prevent ejecting his coffee through his nostrils, and I was frantically searching for words as I tried to explain to him that it was unlikely that his programs (or his bank for that matter) were unlikely to be around in the year 9999.
The fact is that the whole mess happened because the COBOL guys who wrote the rubbish didn't realise their code would be used beyond (19)99.
Cheers, Vikram. (Got my troika of CCCs!)
Vikram A Punathambekar wrote:
The fact is that the whole mess happened because the COBOL guys
Actually, the whole mess stemmed from the use of punched cards in the 60-ties and 70-ties. Most data input was done through the good old IBM 029[^] Records were 80 bytes in length, and they got stored that way on the disks (which were only used for temporary storage, like providing a sorting buffer), or tapes. Space was at a premium on these cards, so if you could omit some digits, and avoid making linked records, you were a hero. Nobody used binary arithmetic, because you could'nt type an int on a punched card (much less figure out what it should be), so decimal arithmetic was rife (remember PIC 99/99/99 ?). The COBOL guys naturally used this 80-character format, because it was the way the records were coming in. In the 70's the 8 inch floppy disk[^] became popular as a data input device, and these beasts had a record length of 128 bytes. However, by that time hard disks were becoming more and more affordable (with HUGE capacities, such as 5MB), and overhauling the record format was just not done, because of the investment in legacy software. (Yes even then... the millenium was still safely away by 30 years, and life expectancy was lower than today, so that you did not have a lot of people born in the previous century). Date problems where handled on a case-by-case basis (providing a wrap around for people born in for example 1896). You would have been hard-pressed to find someone who was a hundred years old, and businesses didn't care, as these people were not really their target market. I remember stories of local councils sending birth presents to old biddies on their 100 birthday, and credit card companies refusing cards to 80-year olds because they were too young.
modified on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 4:53 AM
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Michel Godfroid wrote:
At one point in the meeting he interrupted me, and said "young man," (they don't call me that any more) "are you telling me that moving from 2 to 4 digits is going to cost me half a year profits? In that case I'd better be safe than sorry, could you rework your estimate to move to 5 digits?". The CIO grew red in the face as he was trying to prevent ejecting his coffee through his nostrils, and I was frantically searching for words as I tried to explain to him that it was unlikely that his programs (or his bank for that matter) were unlikely to be around in the year 9999.
The fact is that the whole mess happened because the COBOL guys who wrote the rubbish didn't realise their code would be used beyond (19)99.
Cheers, Vikram. (Got my troika of CCCs!)
Vikram A Punathambekar wrote:
happened because the COBOL guys who wrote the rubbish didn't realise their code would be used beyond (19)99
The COBOL guys just followed the specs. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra]
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Talking about the year 2038[^] bug brings back an anecdote that happened to me in the nineties. I was working for EDS at the time, and my boss had tasked me to present an estimate for an overhaul of all the programs at a large bank. The total bill was going to amount to millions of dollars, so understandably, the chairman of the bank was sitting in on this meeting. At one point in the meeting he interrupted me, and said "young man," (they don't call me that any more) "are you telling me that moving from 2 to 4 digits is going to cost me half a year profits? In that case I'd better be safe than sorry, could you rework your estimate to move to 5 digits?". The CIO grew red in the face as he was trying to prevent ejecting his coffee through his nostrils, and I was frantically searching for words as I tried to explain to him that it was unlikely that his programs (or his bank for that matter) were unlikely to be around in the year 9999.
modified on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 2:32 AM
"Well, there's good news sir; any additional digits can be done for the same price."
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"Well, there's good news sir; any additional digits can be done for the same price."
Actually they couldn't: we had developed a shitload of parsers and semantic analysers, which largely automated the process of moving from 2 to 4 digits. These tools were leveraged across poor customers, so moving to 5 digits would require us to 'fess up'
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Vikram A Punathambekar wrote:
The fact is that the whole mess happened because the COBOL guys
Actually, the whole mess stemmed from the use of punched cards in the 60-ties and 70-ties. Most data input was done through the good old IBM 029[^] Records were 80 bytes in length, and they got stored that way on the disks (which were only used for temporary storage, like providing a sorting buffer), or tapes. Space was at a premium on these cards, so if you could omit some digits, and avoid making linked records, you were a hero. Nobody used binary arithmetic, because you could'nt type an int on a punched card (much less figure out what it should be), so decimal arithmetic was rife (remember PIC 99/99/99 ?). The COBOL guys naturally used this 80-character format, because it was the way the records were coming in. In the 70's the 8 inch floppy disk[^] became popular as a data input device, and these beasts had a record length of 128 bytes. However, by that time hard disks were becoming more and more affordable (with HUGE capacities, such as 5MB), and overhauling the record format was just not done, because of the investment in legacy software. (Yes even then... the millenium was still safely away by 30 years, and life expectancy was lower than today, so that you did not have a lot of people born in the previous century). Date problems where handled on a case-by-case basis (providing a wrap around for people born in for example 1896). You would have been hard-pressed to find someone who was a hundred years old, and businesses didn't care, as these people were not really their target market. I remember stories of local councils sending birth presents to old biddies on their 100 birthday, and credit card companies refusing cards to 80-year olds because they were too young.
modified on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 4:53 AM
Thanks Michel, I stand corrected on the Cobol guys, but that is peripheral to my argument. Whoever started using YY instead of YYYY - Cobol programmers or punched card programmers - clearly didn't believe their software would still be used beyond 1999.
Cheers, Vikram. (Got my troika of CCCs!)
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Thanks Michel, I stand corrected on the Cobol guys, but that is peripheral to my argument. Whoever started using YY instead of YYYY - Cobol programmers or punched card programmers - clearly didn't believe their software would still be used beyond 1999.
Cheers, Vikram. (Got my troika of CCCs!)
We thought we'd all be dead by 1999 :-) Amazed to find myself in the 21st century :confused:
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Talking about the year 2038[^] bug brings back an anecdote that happened to me in the nineties. I was working for EDS at the time, and my boss had tasked me to present an estimate for an overhaul of all the programs at a large bank. The total bill was going to amount to millions of dollars, so understandably, the chairman of the bank was sitting in on this meeting. At one point in the meeting he interrupted me, and said "young man," (they don't call me that any more) "are you telling me that moving from 2 to 4 digits is going to cost me half a year profits? In that case I'd better be safe than sorry, could you rework your estimate to move to 5 digits?". The CIO grew red in the face as he was trying to prevent ejecting his coffee through his nostrils, and I was frantically searching for words as I tried to explain to him that it was unlikely that his programs (or his bank for that matter) were unlikely to be around in the year 9999.
modified on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 2:32 AM
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Talking about the year 2038[^] bug brings back an anecdote that happened to me in the nineties. I was working for EDS at the time, and my boss had tasked me to present an estimate for an overhaul of all the programs at a large bank. The total bill was going to amount to millions of dollars, so understandably, the chairman of the bank was sitting in on this meeting. At one point in the meeting he interrupted me, and said "young man," (they don't call me that any more) "are you telling me that moving from 2 to 4 digits is going to cost me half a year profits? In that case I'd better be safe than sorry, could you rework your estimate to move to 5 digits?". The CIO grew red in the face as he was trying to prevent ejecting his coffee through his nostrils, and I was frantically searching for words as I tried to explain to him that it was unlikely that his programs (or his bank for that matter) were unlikely to be around in the year 9999.
modified on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 2:32 AM
In the middle 70's I was programming S/370's in COBOL and Assembler (mainly assembler, the COBOL group was perceived as those that needed help tying their shoelaces and getting dressed in the mornings) and the project I was working on had to store dates. So I asked my manager if I should use 4 digit years. He smiled and said the code would be replaced long before the year 2000 came along. Famous. Last. Words.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11
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Roger Wright wrote:
The computers were so old that they no longer cared what day it was
That's worth a five of anyone's money!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
Not exactly relevant to the topic but... In '99 a lot of people made a lot of money off the Y2K paranoia. And a lot more people made money from the humor aspect of it (anything can have a humorous side). I bought a "Y2K disposable cigarette lighter" in 1999, complete with a garish and silly logo on its side. It was intended to be a keepsake - joining other useless items in a lower dresser drawer. Over time, here and there I'd run out of butane and visit the dresser to light up a smoke (my only vice). So, it was getting used, if only sparingly. And the damn thing STILL works in 2010. I wish I knew how many times I've used it. Probably hundreds by now. If only everything else was so reliable. I've had marriages that didn't work this long! :laugh:
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I've met people that think the Y2K bug was a hoax [even once in Parade Magazine]. They saw that nothing happened, not knowing the work that went on behind the scenes.
Exactly. The reason "nothing" happened (altough that isn't entirely true) is because of all of the remediation efforts. Where I am employed, our effort to handle Y2K was huge. If we didn't do anything, it would have been disastrous. In fact, we missed at least one change - in late January 2000, a process purged thousands of records from a file, believing the records where "old" because the date was "00".
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Talking about the year 2038[^] bug brings back an anecdote that happened to me in the nineties. I was working for EDS at the time, and my boss had tasked me to present an estimate for an overhaul of all the programs at a large bank. The total bill was going to amount to millions of dollars, so understandably, the chairman of the bank was sitting in on this meeting. At one point in the meeting he interrupted me, and said "young man," (they don't call me that any more) "are you telling me that moving from 2 to 4 digits is going to cost me half a year profits? In that case I'd better be safe than sorry, could you rework your estimate to move to 5 digits?". The CIO grew red in the face as he was trying to prevent ejecting his coffee through his nostrils, and I was frantically searching for words as I tried to explain to him that it was unlikely that his programs (or his bank for that matter) were unlikely to be around in the year 9999.
modified on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 2:32 AM
Having started out as a COBOL developer (even though most would say that that statement is a contradiction in terms), I really enjoyed this joke when it came out. You see, there was once a COBOL programmer in the mid 1990s. For the sake of this story, we'll call him Jack. After years of being taken for granted and treated as a technological dinosaur by all the UNIX programmers and Client/Server programmers and website developers, Jack was finally getting some respect. He'd become a private consultant specializing in Year 2000 conversions. He was working short-term assignments for prestige companies, traveling all over the world on different assignments. He was working 70 and 80 and even 90 hour weeks, but it was worth it. Several years of this relentless, mind-numbing work had taken its toll on Jack. He had problems sleeping and began having anxiety dreams about the Year 2000. It had reached a point where even the thought of the year 2000 made him nearly violent. He must have suffered some sort of breakdown, because all he could think about was how he could avoid the year 2000 and all that came with it. Jack decided to contact a company that specialized in cryogenics. He made a deal to have himself frozen until March 15th, 2000. This was very expensive process and totally automated. He was thrilled. The next thing he would know is he'd wake up in the year 2000; after the New Year celebrations and computer debacles; after the leap day. Nothing else to worry about except getting on with his life. He was put into his cryogenic receptacle, the technicians set the revive date, he was given injections to slow his heartbeat to a bare minimum, and that was that. The next thing that Jack saw was an enormous and very modern room filled with excited people. They were all shouting "I can't believe it!" and "It's a miracle" and "He's alive!". There were cameras (unlike any he'd ever seen) and equipment that looked like it came out of a science fiction movie. Someone who was obviously a spokesperson for the group stepped forward. Jack couldn't contain his enthusiasm. "It is over?" he asked. "Is 2000 already here? Are all the millennial parties and promotions and crises all over and done with?" The spokesman explained that there had been a problem with the programming of the timer on Jack's cryogenic receptacle, it hadn't been year 2000 compliant. It was actually eight thousand years later, not the year 2000. But the spokesman told Jack that he shouldn't get excited; someone important wanted to speak to
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Having started out as a COBOL developer (even though most would say that that statement is a contradiction in terms), I really enjoyed this joke when it came out. You see, there was once a COBOL programmer in the mid 1990s. For the sake of this story, we'll call him Jack. After years of being taken for granted and treated as a technological dinosaur by all the UNIX programmers and Client/Server programmers and website developers, Jack was finally getting some respect. He'd become a private consultant specializing in Year 2000 conversions. He was working short-term assignments for prestige companies, traveling all over the world on different assignments. He was working 70 and 80 and even 90 hour weeks, but it was worth it. Several years of this relentless, mind-numbing work had taken its toll on Jack. He had problems sleeping and began having anxiety dreams about the Year 2000. It had reached a point where even the thought of the year 2000 made him nearly violent. He must have suffered some sort of breakdown, because all he could think about was how he could avoid the year 2000 and all that came with it. Jack decided to contact a company that specialized in cryogenics. He made a deal to have himself frozen until March 15th, 2000. This was very expensive process and totally automated. He was thrilled. The next thing he would know is he'd wake up in the year 2000; after the New Year celebrations and computer debacles; after the leap day. Nothing else to worry about except getting on with his life. He was put into his cryogenic receptacle, the technicians set the revive date, he was given injections to slow his heartbeat to a bare minimum, and that was that. The next thing that Jack saw was an enormous and very modern room filled with excited people. They were all shouting "I can't believe it!" and "It's a miracle" and "He's alive!". There were cameras (unlike any he'd ever seen) and equipment that looked like it came out of a science fiction movie. Someone who was obviously a spokesperson for the group stepped forward. Jack couldn't contain his enthusiasm. "It is over?" he asked. "Is 2000 already here? Are all the millennial parties and promotions and crises all over and done with?" The spokesman explained that there had been a problem with the programming of the timer on Jack's cryogenic receptacle, it hadn't been year 2000 compliant. It was actually eight thousand years later, not the year 2000. But the spokesman told Jack that he shouldn't get excited; someone important wanted to speak to