A lazy fix 20 years ago means the Y2K bug is taking down computers now

newscientist.com

27 points·ozdave··4 comments

From the article:

"Programmers wanting to avoid the Y2K bug had two broad options: entirely rewrite their code, or adopt a quick fix called “windowing”, which would treat all dates from 00 to 20, as from the 2000s, rather than the 1900s. An estimated 80 per cent of computers fixed in 1999 used the quicker, cheaper option."

So basically if (date = 00-20) then year = 20XX

This is the most classic, lazy, contractor fix I have ever heard of- would love to hear some people who actually did support work for Y2k weigh in on this article.

On some systems I've worked (and saw), time and date components were simple bytes. Mostly for easy binary manipulation and also laziness, but mostly it was current practice (on msdos) for that period. Not really to save memory.

Oracle supports the date format string 'RR', but I have a hard time imagine anyone using it for string -> date conversion.

The article linked to from this one from 1999 quite rightly points out the probable cause of this “lazy” fix:

“In certain cases, corporate executives and government bureaucrats approved using the method knowing that problems won’t resurface until after they retire or change jobs.”

https://www.hpcwire.com/1999/03/19/common-y2k-quick-fix-last...

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