this post was submitted on 10 May 2025
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as a gen Z I still don't get why Y2K was such a big deal
It was actually a bit of a big deal. Luckily it got figured out with enough time to fix it before it really effected anything. They were pulling cobalt programmers out of retirement to fix old systems and auditing anything important for years before 2000.
It’s less about the y2k bug itself and more about the cultural phenomenon. It was everywhere, and it was huge, and then absolutely nothing happened. It was the best possible outcome AND the funniest possible outcome.
With stuff like that, it hits different when you live through it and it’s part of popular culture for years. It leaves grooves in the ole neurons.
In contrast I could think about how terrifying the Cuban missile crisis must have been. The fiery end of the world could happen at any moment and everybody knows it. And we even find out afterward that the world was basically saved by one Soviet service member. I can empathize with living through that, but since it happened long before I was born, I don’t have the vivid memories of the actual emotions invading my normal day to day.
Computers were not designed to roll over the year. This would have caused the dates to roll back to 1900 or some day in the past, breaking any logic doing math on dates.
The programming community made huge efforts to fix this problem, and they did across many sectors.
The fact that people don't understand how big of a deal this was is due to the efforts of those that did and were able to correct it.
The media talking about power outages and nukes launching due to Y2K was standard news hype/fear mongering during a crisis with rather boring (to the layman) causes and fixes.
the people problem of any crisis.
If you did nothing, and it becomes a big problem, everyone riots over why you did nothing about it.
If you raised awareness, busted ass, and prevented the issue from happening.. then everyone riots over how much of a "waste" it all was since nothing happened.
Don't worry. The one happening in 2038 should be worse.
What year comes after "99"? People would way "00" meaning 2000 but a computer might say "00" meaning 1900 potentially breaking a lot of data systems/bases
Because all software at that point was unable to handle the new date format. Imagine if today, all computer systems had widespread issues at the same time, on the same day. The only reason nothing happened is because people did their jobs.
Hope this helps.
Not even close to all software. There was a broad mix of stuff that used 2-digit years that would have had problems with it, stuff that used 2-digit years where it wouldn't really impact anything, and stuff that used 4-digit years and so wasn't a problem.
However, if it drove any sort of critical infrastructure, it had to be audited just in case it fit in the first category.
It honestly wasn't. Like yes, it was a real problem, there was a lot of bad, often legacy, code that had to be reviewed and maybe patched. Industrial control code tends to be notoriously bad, and so you never know if this traffic light or that power station is going to glitch out until you dive in
But even as a kid who just knew how to take things apart, I knew it was a nothing burger. Real work went into it, but the fact people in the industry were taking it seriously means there was little actual danger
There was A LOT of doom predictions.. from airplanes dropping out of the sky to power being shut off, to possible missile launches.. it was a good time to be a shit talker in those days. Businesses made a butt ton of money selling snake oil "Y2K" checkers for your computer.. crazy time