IT's finest hour

I was reading this article on CIO.com on whether Y2K was the most overyhyped flop of the centure. It's very interesting to note the persepctive of both side of the issues.

Non IT ( those who didn't know what was going on ) thought that nothing happened when the clock struck 12:00 am that day. I guess everyone was disappointed. They had expected to see "banks losing all the money they had in their vaults, [airplanes] dropping from the sky and general global unrest" instead of a non event. On Jan 1 when everyone woke up to a non chaotic morning, the general consensus would have been that the money went down the drain. Nothin was supposed to happen and nothing happened.

IT people howeverbelive that a lot of work was done (in the background ) for years so that "nothing" happened when the clock struck 12:00. This was what had happened and as expected (due to all the effort that went into it). So the effort was successful.

I remember my family had gone to Calcutta for New Year's celebration to my uncle's place. So when the entire family was out celebrating and wishing each other "Happy new Year", me and 2 of my cousins were in front of the computer watching the clock ticking away to midnight. We were holding our breadth as we neared 12:00 am. I don't remember what we expected to happen but I guess I would have thought the computer would just start showing those gibberish signs and then "swoosh" and it would break down. But, disappointedly nothing happened.

Coming back to the debate, I think it was overhyped, especially the part of everyone's personal computer stopping unless some fix was doneto it. Many people earned a lot on that fear (esp with the prices of PC being so steep, noone wanted to risk it). I agree that a lot of leagcy code as well as hardware that was used to run the banks and the airplanes and hospitals and other electronic systems had to be updated and clearly the IT community achieved a mammoth task through hardwork.
So, though the Y2K was a little overhyped, it was not a flop show.

I liked a particular comment " I guess it's just human nature to expect to get something for your money. When the goal is to not get something, the concept is too novel for most people"