THE Y2K BUG

The Y2K bug or Year 2000 Bug was an oversight of older programming practices. In the initial era of computers, all the major legacy computers and software were made with a programming convention of DD-MM-YY where the year was stored with just digits. Since initially, the memory was costly, as high as 1$ per bit, so any memory saved was a profit, but soon after everyone realized, What would happen in the new millennium?

When YY > 99, it would reset back the year after 31st December 1999 to 1st January 1901 and one functional bug could bring down the whole system. An error such as counting the number of days by subtracting the year from the preceding year might arise.

The Mass Panic by The Media

One of the biggest ill effects of this problem was a widespread panic created by media creating panic among the media, saying that electricity, water, and ATMs could stop working or Nuclear power plants could become unstable. Many starting monetizing this fear and made TV shows and published special books for cooking in the Y2K tragedy.

Exploration of India as an IT Goldmine

By September of the year 1999, almost all the US government systems were declared as bug free but the private sector was still far behind, so with help of India which was an untouched IT goldmine, where coders were trained to work with legacy systems were utilized to make the systems bug free.

What happened on the 1st of January 2000?

Most of the systems on the night of 31st December 1999 responded positively with minor effects like

1. An alarm went on in the nuclear power plant in Ishikawa and radiation monitor failed in Onagawa in Japan.
2. Many ticket systems in Australia went down.
3. A bug on the website of US naval observatory which keeps the official time of the US showing the time as 19100.
4. A few events even happened on the 1st March of 2000 when many systems failed to calculate the leap year.

What to Expect soon?

One such bug coming soon is Y2K38 when after 19 January 2038 the 32-bit signed clock of many UNIX systems will tick over to 13 December 1901.

Or Y10K when we would require a fifth digit to store the year.

Conclusion

This showed the impact a faulty programming standard can have on the world. That's why it is important to write compatible programs.

It also solidified India's position as an IT hub.