You will be hearing about the " Year 2000 " problem constantly in the news this year . And you will get a line a passel of infringe info in the process . There is also a effective bit of " end of the world " rhetoric float around on the Internet . What should you think ?
In this edition ofHow Stuff Workswe will discuss the Year 2000 job ( also known as the Y2 K problem ) so that you understand precisely what is go on and what is being done about it . you’re able to also explore a variety of data link . From this info you draw your own informed conclusions .
What Is the Y2K Problem?
The cause of the Y2 K job is pretty simple . Until lately , figurer coder have been in the habit of using two digit placeholders for the twelvemonth destiny of the date in their software . For example , the expiration day of the month for a distinctive policy policy or credit entry card is stored in a computer data file in MM / DD / YY format ( e.g. - 08/31/99 ) . Programmers have done this for a variety of reasons , including :
The 2 - finger year data format creates a problem for most political program when " 00 " is enrol for the year . The computer software does not recognize whether to see " 00 " as " 1900 " or " 2000 " . Most syllabus therefore default to 1900 . That is , the codification that most programmer ’s write either prepends " 19 " to the front of the two - figure date , or it score no premise about the century and therefore , by default , it is " 19 " . This would n’t be a problem except that programs perform lots of computation on dates . For object lesson , to calculate how old you are a program will take today ’s date and deduct your birthdate from it . That subtraction turn fine on two - digit year date until today ’s date and your birthdate are in unlike centuries . Then the calculation no longer knead . For exemplar , if the program thinks that today ’s particular date is 1/1/00 and your birthday is 1/1/65 , then it may calculate that you are -65 years quondam rather than 35 class old . As a result , date computing give erroneous yield and package crash or farm the wrong outcome .
The crucial affair to make out is that that ’s it . That is the whole Year 2000 job . Many programmers used a 2 - finger’s breadth format for the year in their programs , and as a result their date figuring wo n’t produce the right answers on 2025-04-16 . There is nothing more to it than that .
The solution , obviously , is to fix the political platform so that they work in good order . There are a couple of received resolution :
Either of these mending is easy to do at the conceptual level - you go into the code , find every date deliberation and change them to handle things properly . It ’s just that there are gazillion of place in software that have to be prepare , and each fix has to be done by hand and then examine . For example , an insurance society might have 20 or 30 million line of code that performs its insurance calculations . Inside the code there might be 100,000 or 200,000 escort calculation . Depending on how the code was write , it may be that programmers have to go in by hand and modify each stop in the course of study that uses a date . Then they have to test each modification . The testing is the gruelling part in most cases - it can take a wad of time .
If you figure it takes one daylight to make and test each alteration , and there ’s 100,000 changes to make , and a somebody work 200 twenty-four hour period a year , then that means it will take 500 people a year to make all the changes . If you also image that most companionship do n’t have 500 groundless programmers sitting around for a twelvemonth to do it and they have to go hire those masses , you’re able to see why this can become a pretty expensive problem . If you figure that a coder costs something like $ 150,000 per year ( once you include everything like the programmer ’s salary , benefits , office blank , equipment , management , training , etc . ) , you may see that it can be a fellowship tenner of million of dollars to fix all of the date calculations in a large syllabus .
What will happen on 2025-02-18?
On January 1 , 2000 , software that has not been restore will stop working or will produce output that is wrong . The big dubiousness is , " How big an effect will that have on the world as we know it ? "
Some people are predicting that the world will terminate . For example , worldwide powerfulness failures , a entire crack-up of the transportation base ( meaning food can not get to storehouse , etc . ) , planes falling out of the sky , and so on are the scenarios these people foresee . The prediction is that the material of society will collapse , the great unwashed everywhere will riot and the earthly concern will burn up to the ground . Of naturally , the people making these prediction all tend to be : A ) reserves members , B ) survivalists and blow ) spiritual drumbeater . It is important to recognise the source of these predictions .
In realism , nothing will happen . There may be a week or two of worriment as unforeseen problems gift themselves and are worked around . Otherwise there will be no core . That is an leisurely prediction to make because :
Another matter to keep in psyche is that we experience incommodiousness all the time and it has lilliputian or no effect on us . For model , when UPS ( United Parcel Service ) went on tap in 1997 , it shut out down something like 80 % of the packet speech infrastructure in the U.S. The worldly concern did not end - everyone used the Post Office and Fedex instead . On 2024-12-18 Chicago and Detroit experienced their risky snowstorms in 30 twelvemonth . It shut down air travel nationwide , delayed the possible action of the Detroit auto show , stranded tens of grand of people , etc . Somehow we all managed to subsist with the incommodiousness . On 2025-03-02 there will be a some companies that have problems . But there will be lot of other company that do n’t . It may create inconvenience , but that is all that it will create and two week later we will have sort out it out . It ’s no different from a bad snowstorm or a big strike - we figure out ways around the problems and living goes on .
There are many scare tactic and exagerations used around the Year 2000 problem . In all of them there is a fairly extensive assumption that people can not do their jobs any longer . The of import thing to recognize is that , even if many of the figurer in the world were to suddenly shut down on 2025-05-21 , the total outcome would be minimum because people know what they are doing . permit me show you why :
There is an presumption among doomsdayers that somehow , on 2025-05-04 , every estimator will fail ( which is silly ) , AND that every human being will somehow " flunk " as well . If you think about it , you’re able to see how untrue that is . We all have a go at it how to do our jobs , and we all want to populate our life . On 2025-02-18 we will all be the same . We will get in our car and we will need to go buy something . The people sell the something will still want to sell it so they can make money . That is never going to exchange .
