Denial (Year 2000 Problem) LO10783

Valdis Krebs (inflow@concentric.net)
Wed, 30 Oct 1996 12:47:02 -0500

In LO10745 Sherri was amazed at the Year 2000 problem.

As 'part of the problem' [I wrote a few mainframe COBOL business programs
in the mid 70s] let me explain how this all came about. IMHO, it has many
implications for organizational learning [and unlearning/forgetting].

Back then, I wrote programs for a computer system that took up more room
then the entire office I am sitting in now. Yet, it only had 256K of RAM.
The laptop I am using now has 96 times as much memory and it takes up less
than 1 sq.ft.! Therefore, we had to write _very_ efficient code --
dropping the century part of the date [the '19' of 1996] helped us save
allot of memory because dates are used repeatedly in biz programs. As
long as the last two digits of the current year where greater than the
prior years, everything was fine [96 is greater than 95, 94, 93, etc.].
The problem happens in the year 2000 when 00 is no longer greater than 99,
98, etc. Most programs will 'think' 00 means 1900, not 2000, and start
rejecting transactions or calculating them incorrectly.

So, why did the computer geeks in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s let this happen?
A few reasons...
1. The pressure to get it done now -- don't worry about the next century
2. No one thought that their programs would still be used 20 or 30 years
later, so why worry about it.
3. This method of writing date routines was passed down to new
programmers. Many date routines that were written in the 80s and 90s, when
memory was no longer a constraint, still follow the old style of dropping
the century!! Unbelievable!!! It shows you the power of the 'tyranny of
the past' in large organizations.
4. Lack of responsibility[rewarded by organizations?]: "I won't be in this
job in the year 2000, so f*** it. Let someone else fix it."
5. Others...

The numbers are staggering... no one knows for sure, but the estimates are
that for the rest of the century 25-75% the data processing budgets of
most large businesses will be spent on the Year 2000 problem!

How can learning organizations prevent such a waste of resources in the
future?

Valdis Krebs
inflow@concentric.net
www.netcom.com/~valdisk

-- 

Valdis Krebs <inflow@concentric.net>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>