Y2K: The bug that didn't bite
summary
Year 2000 risk is a concrete case study: legacy COBOL and firmware on IBM 1401s with 16 kilob of memory force two‑digit years, fixes include date expansion, windowing, and the clever date repartitioning that lasts until 2899. Governments fund task forces (UK Action 2000 ~£17m), crews manually inspect millions of lines (insurance systems of 20–30M LOC with 100–200k date ops), 15 nuclear reactors shut down but backups hold, and global remediation costs reach an estimated 300–500 billion, with much code refactored and resilience actually improved.
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chapters (17)
- 0:00Y2K era begins
- 2:09Millennium Bug fear
- 3:35Y2K problem explained
- 5:22Two-digit years
- 8:58Embedded computers in 1999
- 10:43UK’s Action 2000
- 11:47Fixing Y2K with date expansion
- 12:52Windowing solution
- 13:38Date repartitioning
- 15:09Unusual Y2K issues
- 16:37NYE 2000 chaos in Scotland
- 17:20Y2K health failures
- 18:24Why apocalypse didn’t happen
- 19:11Was Y2K response justified
- 20:39Lessons for modern devs
- 22:01Future date issues
- 23:49Y2K legacy
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