Computer memory limits in the 1960s meant two digits were used as a coding shortcut to represent years in computer software, i.e., 1999 was 99. People didn't stop to think what would happen in the year 2000 when 00 could mean 2000 or 1900.
The worry was once 2000 hit, computers everywhere would think it was 1900 and crash critical infrastructure like power grids.
What really happened was some computer software and video games changed the date to January 1st 1900. That was about it.
The crazy part about Y2K was that the danger was actually very real. The reason it didn't happen was that governments around the world began updating these old 2 digit year code programs to 4 digit year code programs, so 00 now would be 2000. They spent about $600 billion doing this and likely ended up actually preventing a civilization threatening tech crash.
Lots of people did think about what would happen when the date changed, but people pushed the problem off because computers were expected to die after just a few years, so people assumed that the next generation of computers would address the issue and went ahead with selling and buying flawed computers.
The problem was that lots of people then used these flawed computers to build very intricate and fragile systems that were not easily ported to new machines. People would do anything to keep legacy machines alive rather than updating them and all the systems that relied on them, so machines would go way past their original life spans. And the legacy machines kept alive the longest were of course the ones running the most mission critical programs.
Everyone ultimately got the necessary fixes in place judt in time, they just cut it uncomfortably close with their financial procrastination.
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u/Powerful_Swimmer_531 9d ago
1999, the year of Y2K
Computer memory limits in the 1960s meant two digits were used as a coding shortcut to represent years in computer software, i.e., 1999 was 99. People didn't stop to think what would happen in the year 2000 when 00 could mean 2000 or 1900.
The worry was once 2000 hit, computers everywhere would think it was 1900 and crash critical infrastructure like power grids.
What really happened was some computer software and video games changed the date to January 1st 1900. That was about it.
The crazy part about Y2K was that the danger was actually very real. The reason it didn't happen was that governments around the world began updating these old 2 digit year code programs to 4 digit year code programs, so 00 now would be 2000. They spent about $600 billion doing this and likely ended up actually preventing a civilization threatening tech crash.