You'll have to excuse me if I barge in with a more realistic 'bah, humbug!!' here. I'm sorry to rain on your hand wringing, cackling laugh, heads full of images of the suffering 'dem dar peepuls over dere, but NOT me'. Y2K has been the source of more rampant paranoia and silliness since the turn of the 1st millennium AD. My worst fear about Y2K is that fruitcakes will be roaming the streets hoping to MAKE something apocalyptic happen when the full blown disaster fails to appear and bring about (insert religious/social nutbar fantasy here).

And... well, I hate to slag the proprietor of the forum, but what happened to you Mr. Yourdon? At one time you did good, solid work to provide software engineers such as myself with tools to attack the complexity of designing and building systems. I can't say I agreed with everything you ever said, but then I can't say that about anybody in the field either. Unfortunately, since the publication of 'Decline and Fall...' you seem to have turned from doing valuable work to become a self made 'Chicken Little'. Have the ideas just been that hard to come by? My God, going from books on software methodologies to survivalist tomes that cater to the foil hat crowd. Maybe you sincerely believe this stuff, but those of us in the trenches, actually writing code day in and day out, we need better. Trust me, there are a microscopic number of us (if any at all) actually planning to run for a cave on 12/31/99.

And I hate to spoil it for the rest of you, but the sun will come out, you'll still be able to go down to your local grocery chain, and the same old, unfortunately ordinary, problems of life will all be there on 1/1/2000. I'm confident I'll be watching bowl games with my heat still on that day. And I KNOW that my boss and yours will expect our collective backsides in our regular seats come the business day following.

-- Dave H (dh100@netscape.net), September 15, 1999

Answers

Dave,

Well, if you haven't agreed with everything I've ever said, I certainly wouldn't expect you to begin doing so now...

To answer your question: yes, I really do sincerely believe "this stuff" about Y2K being a serious problem. It's easy to dismiss those of us with a pessimistic outlook by characterizing us as "foil hat" lunatics who are preparing to "run for a cave," but the reality is that some of us are reasonably intelligent, reasonably experienced in the computer field, and reasonably serious about the reasons for our concerns. I don't know if you have bothered looking at the couple dozen articles on my web site at http://www.yourdon.com but I've done my best to explain exactly WHY I think we're going to have a lot of problems on January 1, 2000.

If it turns out that I'm wrong, then my backside will indeed be in my regular seat on January 3rd; frankly, I hope that turns out to be the case, for it will be a lot more pleasant than what will be going on if it turns out that I'm right.

And that's what this discussion forum is all about. If it turns out that I'm wrong, perhaps some of us will feel that we've wasted a little time and energy, and that we've got a few too many cans of tuna-fish in the cupboard -- but we've got the option of going back to a life of deja vu all over again. Some of us, though, will find that some aspects of our lives, and some views and opinions that we took for granted, are changed irrevocably. For example, even though I don't think we're going to see a failure of the entire national power grid, I do think there's a non-trivial chance that there will be power failures in my local geographical area. Rather than buying "insurance" in the form of a generator, I decided to make an "investment" by equipping my house with solar panels and a windmill. I'm off the grid, saving money already, and will continue to do so regardless of the outcome of Y2K; and regardless of what anyone else thinks, it makes me feel good to be generating electricity in a more ecology-friendly way.

Meanwhile, if it turns out that I'm right, then we're all in for some degree of pain and suffering next year -- and possibly longer than that. My pain and suffering will presumably be much less than yours, because it sounds like you're absolutely determined NOT to make any preparations. But beyond that, I think I'll be in a better position to cope with the consequences of a bad Y2K outcome, because I will have spent some time -- along with other participants on this forum -- trying to anticipate various scenarios and how we'll cope with them. You, meanwhile, will be sitting in a cold house wondering why there are no bowl games on the TV.

Obviously, there's no way that I can prove you're wrong, and there's no way you can prove I'm wrong about all of this (referring to me as a "self made 'Chicken Little'" does not constitute proof). It's unlikely that either of us will be able to change the other's opinion, and frankly, it's not worth the effort -- there's too much left to do, and there are only 107 days left.

Ed

P.S. It's not the "fruitcakes" roaming the streets that you should be worried about, but rather the hackers (e.g., disgruntled programmers who felt they should have gotten a bigger raise, and who have decided to get their revenge by putting bugs into the code they were supposed to remediate) and terrorists who will be taking advantage of the opportunity to make something TRULY apocalyptic happen. If I were a fanatical terrorist who was convinced that the U.S. was Evil Incarnate, I couldn't imagine a better place to wreak havoc than Times Square on New Year's Eve.

-- Ed Yourdon (HumptyDumptyY2K@yourdon.com), September 15, 1999.

"My worst fear about Y2K is that fruitcakes will be roaming the streets hoping to MAKE something apocalyptic happen when the full blown disaster fails to appear and bring about (insert religious/social nutbar fantasy here). "

Dave, if some fruitcake should take out a power substation near you, do you have extra batteries for your flashlight? If some other fruitcake takes a chainsaw to a set of phone cables, can you still do business?

-- helen (sstaten@fullnet.net), September 15, 1999.

Dave H.,

Your unsupported claim that everything will be alright, and your gratuitous slam at Mr. Yourdon convince me that you are not worthy of reply. I reply only because a post on Gary North's site today or yesterday contradicts your assertion that a microscopic number of programmers are preparing for bad times, and from that I conclude that _all_ of what you say is worthy of contradiction.

George

-- George Valentine (GeorgeValentine@usa.net), September 15, 1999.

Dave

You should go down to Sam's and buy a dozen plastic buckets and plastic shovels (on sale now that summer is past). Then you will be prepared to help us rebuild.

By the way, if you truely are in the trenches crunching code to save a company from y2k, all power to you. Part of rebuilding will be easier the more functional pieces we have working before the rollover.

Maybe if we are lucky, we will find out that a lot of the things that don't work too well are not really needed anyway.

-- Thom Gilligan (thomgill@eznet.net), September 15, 1999.

Dave, I agree with a lot of what you said. Gary North and Michael Hyatt have been telling us a heck of a lot more than they know.

But just because they have been wrong with every prediction to date does not mean that the actual rollover will be a non-event. I think that it's a complex enough issue that no-one -- let me repeat NO ONE - - not even you, knows how it's going to turn out. Hoping you're right in your prediction of your last paragraph (life goes on as before) and I believe that there's better than 90% probability that you're right.

But what are your credentials? What is going to give us that 99%++ certainty that you are right and that no preparation for any failure is required?

Just having a bit of a problem with absolutism on Y2k predictions -- pollies and doomers alike.

Mikey2

-- Mikey2 (mikey2k@he.wont.eat.it), September 16, 1999.

Dave H,

First I will say that I appreciate your opinion. This is a democratic forum that must include many opinions in order to form a proper consensus based on facts. I have personally found it very enlightening just visiting day by day to see the broad spectrum of ideas us common folk are capable of. Therein lays a primary basis of our country's culture; makes the US a great country.

Second a word about the fruitcakes. I appreciate them too. They are part of our culture (by design) and I use them as a yard stick to gauge my own thoughts and emotions. I don't recall ever seeing any fruitcakes in Russia prior to 1990 or in China. Then to, now, its hard to imagine that Jules Verne, Edison and maybe even Bill Gates were, no doubt, once thought of as fruitcakes. Nutty ideas sometimes bear fruit.

Third I believe you are correct about "rampant paranoia and silliness." There is a certain amount of that within some parts of our society. Primarily the media. They seem to want to trivialize the Y2K problem to the point of paranoia. Many times a day they proclaim there is no problem. It seems silly to say it so often.

Fourth as far as slagging Mr. Yourdon? Well.I think you give yourself a little to much credit as an orator. It is true that Mr. Yourdon has made a long and significant contribution to IT. It hasn't stopped. This forum is proof of that as well as your ability to post your opinion to it. And, I doubt that calling him names is the proper incentive to turn on his creative juices.

Fifth speaking for those in the trenches. Again, I believe you may have overstepped the bounds of propriety. I have read innumerable posts of those in the trenches that convey the opposite message you claim for them. Therein may lay your problem. Speaking from 40 years experience in IT, much of it spent in the trenches, I find the world kind of passes me by when I'm down there. When I do get the chance to come up where the real world resides, I find it take several months for me to catch up with it. I know you guys have been working hard for several years down there and I appreciate that. But, it does have a way of limiting your perspective.

Sixth your going to spoil it for us. All by yourself? You must show me how you propose to do that. There are 25+ billion computers worldwide. We must assume they are all broke, find them, test them and repair if necessary, then test them. All before January 1st. That is fact. A daunting task for millions let alone one. If something less that 1% of the computers fault during January, it will cause major havoc worldwide. If you know something of fact that will prevent that, please tell me. I have been searching for an answer for 2 years and haven't found it. Maybe you know something I don't.

Lastly Dave, I want to thank you for giving me this chance to give a heartfelt thanks to Ed, Michael, Gary and others out there who have put their reputations on the line by raising the flag, ringing the bell, giving us all information, facts, and forums for discussion of this truly huge and misunderstood problem. You are truly the weathermen and bellwethers of our society. There is not enough gratitude available to make up for the countless hours of effort you have all willingly given so that we common folk can make up our own minds and determine our individual paths to follow based on facts. I just want you to know it has not been in vain. There are a number of us silent ones out here that have benefited immeasurably from your efforts. Thank you.

Joe T, Sr

-- Joe Tietjens (joetsr@excite.com), September 16, 1999.

Dave I'm sorry to say, I hope you're right ! But if you're not , the only thing left for you to eat will be "crow". At least save a few packs of matches so you won't have to eat it raw ! The amazing thing about all of this is that those that do believe have at least something reasonable to go on,Those that don't just don't !

-- (jmattingly@mail.gcnet.net), September 16, 1999.

Mr Yourdon, I can well appreciate how you could be worried about power. As for fruitcakes in the streets, how could you tell? Ha, Ha just kidding. Where you live, well it's close to heaven.

-- ramahlake (stonie1012@aol.com), September 17, 1999.

Helen,

What's to prevent the problems that your are worried about from happening Y2K or no Y2K. The subjects you brought up could happen every day. Yet somehow we go on. Ditto with hackers, etc. These aren't Y2K specific. Hacker attacks occur probably every day in the US and elsewhere.

One of the things that has happened is for everything that could possibly go wrong to be lumped under Y2K as a reason to expect the collapse of civilization. If not on January 1,2000 soon after. Somehow I think we will still be here.

-- The Engineer (The Engineer@tech.com), September 17, 1999.

Dave, when I am driving two lane blacktop I am sometimes uncomfortably aware of how easily an oncoming vehicle could suddenly appear in a tight curve in the wrong lane, my lane, and it would be 9999 for me. It's never happened, and is it because I'm just such a lucky guy? Luck is a small part of it. The biggest part is the competence of the other drivers on the road with me. I depend on their competence and I can reasonably predict it, just as I can reasonably predict that you will do what you do as best you can. I can reasonably expect that everyone will do what they do as best they can. But not everyone feels as I do. For various reasons, people loose the faith that I am expressing. Ed Yourdon is one of those people whose faith has been shaken. He no longer assumes the competence and dependability of his fellow travelers will be sufficient to get him through because he has created a monster called y2k, a technical problem that boggles the imagination of anyone who tries to wrap their mind around it. The simple fact is that the people who created the computer glitch can also fix it and are doing their best to do so. No mere technical problem will undo this nation of techies. It is a reasonable attitude to have for those who have not lost their faith. Ed Yourdon has a non-technical bug to deal with, a bug to which technical people are most vulnerable. It is a bacterium called Garius Northus, belonging to the species homo religiosus. Technical people are often psychologically naive. The millennium bug is a figment of the imagination, not a technical problem in reality. Technical problems we can deal with. Intoxicating vapors rising from the depth of the unconscious are more difficult. You know something's happening, but you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones? Something is happening, that's for damn sure, but it isn't y2k. It's Garius Northus, an infectious agent, one of a growing number of such agents in our midst: religious fanatics. There's the millennium bug. There's the reason why Ed Yourdon has elevated y2k to cosmic proportions and lost his faith in the competence of his fellow travelers. Technical problems will be solved because they are the easiest. It's what Americans do best. Religious fanaticism disguised as reasonable and objective analysis is the problem. This is what scares the bejeesus out of Alan Greenspan. So don't expect Ed Youdon to be happy if y2k is just a bump in the road. He's looking for the Achille's Heel of the modern world and he'd like to see it cut, though he is not himself willing to wield the knife. His liberalism is dying, though not yet dead. He would not count himself in the ranks of terrorists and rogue hackers and other agents of chaos. He just doesn't like things the way they are, that's all. And I can't blame him, frankly. I don't either. When y2k comes and goes, don't expect Ed or other y2k alarmists to suddenly loose their fear & loathing of the future. There is no future for them, not as we know it.

-- joseph danison (jdanison@aol.com), September 18, 1999.

Response to Joseph D. Please send a copy of your post to the governments and corporations that are spending billions of hard earned dollars to fix this non- event. Frankly, I'm relieved to know now that Y2K won't happen. I just hope you can convince that rest of the planet before they waste all that talent trying to fix it.

-- Dennis (b01d10w51@mindspring.com), September 20, 1999.

The Engineer,

That's exactly the point all of us should be taking from this experience - that it can happen Y2K or not.

We have a hastily put together, poorly planned, fragile infrastructure. Things are quickly glommed onto existing systems, without thought as to how it affects what is already there.

Communities like my sister's semi-rural, "white flight" neighborhood, are a good example. Lots of water and power problems, because no one thought to upgrade said utilities, before this former farmland area suddenly received a several thousand fold increase in population.

Unless expansion is slowed so that infrastuctures can catch up (Which isn't likely, considering the economic impact and loss of profits), there eventually will be large scale, potentially catostrophic failures. Y2K is just a likely trigger for those failures. But just because we get lucky and don't experience it all falling apart, next year, won't mean that the danger is past. far from it. It will probably give people an eveb greater sense of invulnerablity, and they will proceed twice as recklessly, as before.

My wife and I have not gone completely "survivalist". We like our quiet little suburban neighborhood (It's an older neighborhood with close-to-an-acre yards, so you get that sense of community, without having people right on top of you). But there's no way we'll ever be caught again, with an empty pantry and no alternative sources of heat and water.

If there is no Y2K collapse, our five year plan is to go solar (in a really major way), build a screen porch (for summer sleeping during power outages), and to increase our capacity for rain water storage. These are all practical items that come in handy and save you money, in the best of times, and are life-savers in the worst of times.

-- Bokonon (bon0non@my-Deja.com), September 21, 1999.

Dave,

With all due respect, please don't attempt to speak for all of us "in the trenches". You are probably right when you say the number of those planning to "run for a cave" is small. However, I know there are more than a few of us in the trenches who plan on doing something in between NOTHING and TEOTWAWKI preparation. I am not contributing to any mass panic. I am quiety and unobtrusively preparing my small family for a potential disaster well in advance.

Should society head south on 1/1/99 in whatever manner (from "bump in the road" to catastrophic) I will have taken out an insurance policy with myself in preparation. Or if you are an investor consider it a hedge. Either way, should your scenario occur and my tired, unfortunate backside end up in my regular seat on the first Monday of next year, pause for a moment and ask yourself what I have lost.

From your point of view I have (foolishly) purchased food and supplies in advance that I don't need. What is truly wrong with that?

I must applaud Bokonon's contribution. This preparation is something I should have done long ago. Like most of society I have been lulled into the false expectations that I SHOULD receive a 20% return on the stock market, a hefty raise each year, and I have the RIGHT not to have to deal with any disaster, natural or otherwise.

With a simple FIFO (first in, first out) food and supply inventory going forward, I will always have some extra in the pantry for whatever event or non-event occurs. I too, like most in this forum hope you are right Dave. I truly hope that you are watching the ball game and I am sleeping in, both of us in our heated homes and y2k is forgotten a week into next year.

But Dave, which of us will be more comfortable if, by even the remotest chance, that ol utility plant down the road that is 1000% y2k ready today just cant quite get that durned electricity flowing on 1/1/2000?

Do you back up your data/information when you are working in the trenches Dave? We both know why most professionals in this industry do soon that slight chance that one day that precious hard drive will find itself too close to a magnet or lightning bolt for comfort. Enough said. Sorry for preaching.

To Dave and all the rest of those who find preparation a foolish sort of sport, best of luck to you. Just keep in mind that preparation is easy right now. SHOULD the time come when food or other necessities are no longer widely available, no offense but please dont knock on my door ok? I won't be able to offer any assistance.

Regards,

-- devVB (devvisualbasic@aol.com), October 04, 1999.

I suppose you don't have car insurance,fire insurance or any other "just in case" insurance.

-- Itol D. Youso (mrosscorecomm@hotmail.com), October 09, 1999.

Dave, one more point for the pot. Contrary to modern belief, the history books show there was absolutley no "1st millennium" panic. The millennium panic we're experiencing at the moment, in our "modern" world, is unique in history.

-- JQ (onca@hotmail.com), November 07, 1999.