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Year 2000 - Y2K
What's the Problem?
by Sally Strackbein
There is a problem
Many computers will be confused when December 31, 1999, becomes January 1, 2000. Too many computer programs use only the last 2 digits of the year. They think all years begin with 19. When the year
becomes 00, they will think it is 1900. These computers may stop or make mistakes. That is the Year 2000 Problem.
It's everywhere
Computer software impacts every aspect of our lives:
If there is no electricity, nothing else will work, including computers that are Y2K compliant.
You know it's true
If you don't work with computers in your job, you know someone who does. Ask that person what it was like when they put in a new version of software. Did it work exactly right the first time? Did it take
a while to work the kinks out? Were the computers down for an hour, a day or a week? Perhaps you've heard the stories about the pager system that was down for a day, or the supermarket whose registers
didn't work or your dentist who couldn't make your appointment. These glitches all got fixed, so what's the big deal?
What's the big deal?
The Social Security Administration announced in December, 1998, that they are completely Year 2000 ready. I started my programming career there, so I know they have an excellent staff of computer
programmers. They began looking at the problem in 1989. They just recently finished. It took nine years!
The electric companies started too late to fix everything in time. The North American Electric Reliability Council report dated January 11, 1999, states that everything is going to be OK. But the facts
stated in the report tell another story:
The 103 nuclear reactors show their remediation (problems fixed and possibly tested) average only 31% complete.
The non-nuclear plants average 42% complete in their remediation.
If they do not finish in time, we will have power outages
while they find and attempt to fix what is left. Without electricity, water companies cannot treat and pump water. Sewage companies cannot pump sewage from your home and treat it. Grocery stores cannot send automated orders to warehouses. Food processing plants cannot process food…
It is impossible to fix it in time
I've been programming computers for about 30 years. I'm a good programmer. I meet my deadlines and my programs work. I say this because I work in an industry notorious for not meeting deadlines and for
producing programs that don't work.
Computer programs consist of lines of instructions for the computer to follow. Computer programmers write these lines of instructions. You can visualize a computer program as a recipe book having many
dishes.
Imagine that cookbook having no titles on the recipes, just ingredients and instructions. The ingredient names have been abbreviated and you don't always recognize the terms. Also, there is no index. You
have to find the recipe for cake by reading the recipes one by one. You can easily make chocolate pudding when you really wanted cake. This is what programmers go through when they fix old programs.
In the old days of computers, it wasn't unusual to have a set limit on how big a program could be. This meant that any comments or explanations had to be left out for lack of room. It meant that date
fields might be called D1 (for beginning date) or B (for date of birth). Imagine trying to read through a bunch of garbled instructions to try to figure out what was going on. Sometimes, there are pieces
of programs left in that are no longer used because the rules changed. A programmer might fix those pieces yet miss the ones still being used. Every time a law changes, many programs must be changed for
a business to comply with the new law. Imagine how often tax programs have changed.
There are billions of lines of old computer instructions, also called code, that need to be fixed. I don't believe for a minute that billions of lines of code are going to be deciphered and fixed and
tested in time. When I ask the speakers at Y2K meetings in the Washington, D.C., area, "Are you going to test all of your programs together as a system?" They invariably say, "We can't
shut everything down and do a real test. We'd lose revenue…"
that is the problem that got us into his mess. And that is the problem now. Programmers wanted to change to 4 digit years and their bosses told them, "No. It will cost too much." They are still saying, "It will cost too much."
I hear this from utility company representatives among others. If your electric company is not testing everything, are you willing to stake your life on their untested project? The power companies are
doing the best they can. They just started too late a start.
I expect power outages. How severe? I don't know. There were power outages in Central Virginia recently because of an ice storm. Some families had no power for over a week. We need power to pump our water from our well. We are putting in solar panels to power our water pump as an insurance policy. We installed a wood stove for heat. We bought oil lamps and oil for light.
(Since I first wrote this, we also had an ice storm and lost electricity for two days. We were fine only because of our Y2K preparations. We were the only ones in our neighborhood who had enough water to
flush our toilets.)
What I find most discomforting is that most of the Year 2000 fixing is being done by programmers unfamiliar with the programs they are fixing. There is no way they can or will adequately test their work.
A few will get lucky; most will not.
I am not willing to bet my life on it. I am not willing to let others bet my life. I am shouting to the treetops for everyone else not to bet their lives.
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www.y2kkitchen.com Copyright © Sally Strackbein sally@y2kkitchen.com
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