remember y2k? maybe you're too young, but 16 years ago, in 1999, a vast number of people were in a panic over the great calendar rollover. going from 1999 to 2000 doesn't seem like such a big deal from this side, but at the time there was great consternation over computer systems' being able to handle 4-digit years. the panic was immense. frogs! locusts! planes falling from the sky! thing is, as immense as the panic was, it really wasn't unfounded because the threat was real.
the first widespread use of electronic calculating machines (precursors to computers) were made by IBM and made use of punch cards to store data and programming. if you don't understand how data and programs can be stored on punched cardstock, this is not the place to learn. what you can learn here is that these cards enforced an 80-column limit. hmm. okay, i'm not going to explain all this. suffice it to say that punch cards and their 80-column limit inspired space-saving tricks, and one of the most reliable was to drop the century distinguisher. 1976 becomes 76. 1983 becomes 83. you get the point. as programming move from cards into types of magnetic or digitized storage, space remained an issue, so the century remained dropped.
in contrast to something programmers WERE thinking about - saving space - there was something programmers were not thinking about - lifespan of their programs. invariably, these young men and women really didn't think about the future. who does, at that age. they assumed life would simultaneously go on exactly as it was, rendering their programs forever relevant - and dramatically change in ways that would render their programs irrelevant and cause some future person to routinely replace them. either way, they didn't need to worry about it.
these programmers' concern for saving space coupled with their not concerning themselves with longevity of their work caused them to not care and merrily spew un-prefixed years throughout their code.
aaaaand, here we are in '99 faced with an instance where those prefixing numbers are going to be a Really Big Deal. calculations are literally counting on 00 being less than 99 and will literally calculate accordingly. what calculations, you ask? well, i don't really want to get into the weeds here, so let's just say... all of them, underlying everything from air traffic control to grocery store point of sale. trust me, this was a Really Big Deal.
so. it was a RBD an people understandably panicked. some went off the grid and planted potatoes and beans, so they could be self-sufficient when the world ended. others madly reprogrammed like every computer system in the entire world. the rest of us stood by and watched the clock.
in the end, the rollover went pretty smoothly. i'm certain some systems weren't ready and those systems choked on themselves, but none of the really big ones - the banks, the stock exchanges, the governments, the aforementioned air traffic control - none of these failed. it was a credit to all those hardworking programmers. there was a real crisis and it was really averted.
now, it's forgotten. or, worse perhaps, minimized. "y2k, the problem that never materialized. a lot of geeks panicking over nothing. snerk! snerk!" when the truth is, it only looks like nothing now because those programmers worked so hard to make it nothing at the time. i think that's ironic, but maybe it's just life.
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