Y2K Reminder On Hard vs Soft & Low-Risk Doomsters

Plenty of reminiscing around the twenty-year anniversary of the ‘beating’ of the Millennium Bug. The turn of the century curse on computer systems worldwide rendering Y2K potentially doomsday. I recall similar a decade back too.

Among the historical memory lanes I noted the warning of the next impending such crisis (GPS collapse). As well as the two different approaches to fixes back in the day. Where you could either opt for the ‘hard’, rebuilding the underlying structure, or ‘soft’, a quick fix using Windowing (in this case, Date Windowing).

This strikes me as relevant to many a problem-solving solution sale. Given the overwhelming ‘success’ of few (hardly any) major incidents, are you providing the ‘soft’ way forward?

Also interesting was discovering the thoughts of Anthony Finkelstein, professor of software systems engineering at University College London;

“Being a prophet of doom is a low-risk occupation. If things go wrong, you are a prophet. If nothing happens, it’s because you warned people… [But] the notion that panic is good for people – it’s unprofessional. It’s patronising. It’s contemptible.”

Something to remember perhaps when you track such prospect-side murmurs to a specific source.