I had to let off steam somewhere: all over the UK news media today (because of a statement by a politician) "the millennium bug" is being given as an example of a source of panic that never really existed. This is hugely infuriating - many of us will remember the massive effort put in by the engineering community in the late 1990s to fix code bugs (or "features") which would have caused chaos if nothing had been done about them. For example, in my own field, a large percentage of the UK rail network would have ground to a halt.
So instead of "engineers identified that 'the millennium bug' was a risk, so they put in a huge amount of effort and fixed it so that everyone could keep using their 1970s software instead of making them buy new" we have had for years "engineers scare mongered about the millennium bug that never really existed". And clearly it's now fully embedded in urban lore.
As anyone who reads my posts here will know, I think as a profession we often get too hung up on the issue of whether engineers are treated with "respect". But on this particular issue I strongly think that the work done by these teams is not given the respect it deserves, and I wish I knew what we could do about it!!!!!!
Grrrr.....
Andy
(Please note: This is nothing to do with any angle on the particular political debate surrounding today's release, both sides of the debate are wrongly referring to the "fake millennium bug".)
