Y2K HOAX

On January 3, 1999, John Roberts, week-end National CBS Anchor, warned the American people that they had 362 days and 6 hours to take care of "their" Y2K computer problem. To his credit Roberts did not go further.

Computer gurus have been predicting that unless Corporate America and the US Government spend untold billions of dollars, obviously by hiring them to "fix" the problem, that the economy would come to a halt at midnight of December 31, 1999; that social security pensioners would not get their checks: that the stock market would crash; that nuclear missiles would be fired at random across the country; that power companies would cease to deliver power, that a host of other horrendous scenarios would occur. Even the Russians want to get in on the easy money with veiled threats that their nuclear missiles might accidentally be fired if they don't get some of the Y2K bonanza.

Pardon me, this is hokum! A problem that can be fixed by an average programmer in a normal review of his programs has been blown out of proportion. In the '60s this old computer programmer was programming in FORTRAN for scientific applications, and in BASIC and COBOL for Business applications. These programming languages have been replaced by more up-to-date languages at some installations. But a field of data is still defined when the programmer designs the logic of his program is it not? And during maintenance updates potential bugs can and have always been "fixed." There are a few simple things to look for in the logic of each program. These are: (1) Is the field of data where the year of the transaction, event, command, etc. used in making a decision date sensitive? (2) Is the data in the field for the year of the transaction, event, command, etc. used in computations? If either of these conditions applies then the simple solution is to change the field to at least four digits. There are other considerations such as storing totals; the field must be able to accommodate the size of the largest expected total. But this is all elementary my Dear Mr. Watson. The most disingenuous programmer fixes problems of this genre on a daily basis.

I had an article published in Purchasing Magazine on Inventory Control in June of 1965 and another on Computer Security in Defense Perspectives Magazine at the National Defense University in November of 1973. Both of these programs dealt with much more complexity than the "so-called" Y2K Computer glitch.

So why are we hearing so much about the Y2K glitch? Snake oil, my Dear Mr. Watson. The 2000 problem can occur when computers use two digits instead of four, or more, to represent the year of a date. So the fix is to increase the field to four or more digits then run the program in "test mode" with test data that has transactions that occur in the year 2000. While you are at it run some data with years 2010, 2050, 2099, and even the year 3000. I am assuming you are running this test data in a "test mode" run, i.e. the results of the run will not fire nuclear missiles. Now, do this for all your programs then check your output and correct any bugs that may result. Don't buy snake oil, if you do, the same guru will return to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Y2K HOAX continues, Yuk!