Y2K

In defense of disregarding warnings of danger, we still see refernces to the Y2K computer date problem, and statements that it turned out not to be a problem at all. That is totally false. Thousands of people like me worked for several years to find and fix these date problems. I personally looked at every line of scores, maybe hundreds, of computer programs. IT people had tried for years to get management to allocate time and funds to start working on the problem, but could not get the resources until disaster was near. If we had had the resources to start earlier, much of it could have been doen as part of other projects, or during slack periods, and would have cost less.

Almost any program that contained date calculations or comparisons needed to be fixed. This includes payroll programs (eg., calculations of vacation pay), savings account and loan interest, annuities, time clocks.

In fact, there were problems because of date computations that did not get fixed, including a malfunction at a nuclear power plant, but even those which were reported in the newspaper got small articles in back pages, where few people saw them.

Then. after people like me saved the economy of the world from crashing, we were thown on the trash heap.