When you're 100 years old

Yes, I read thta story and had a giggle.

😂

What a great story, and doesnt she wear it well?
She looks great, although not quite like a baby.

It is exactly Y2K. They have a 2 digit space for the year (ie dd/mm/yy)
That was what was wrong with the software 25 years ago. And the reason the predictions didn't happen was that I and loads of other programmers worked very hard to fix it in time!

What is Y2K, please?
I'm sure I should know, but I don't.

It was that thing where we all had a bit of a panic thinking the world (or at least, all our tech) would end at midnight on 31/12/99, as computers wouldn’t be able to compute the date 01/01/00.

People laughed afterwards about us being so naive as to think there would ever be problems. Not knowing that there really would have been if we hadn’t had people like yggdrasil working on it!

How embarrassing for American Airlines! Why on earth haven't they sorted this before.

Surely most places want four digits now!

MissAdventure

What is Y2K, please?
I'm sure I should know, but I don't.

I think it's Year 2000...?

Oh I think I get it now.
Thanks.

Y2K was the computer disaster, set to shut down the world at the millennium. To save computing space, they used only two digits for the year - just as in this case, so when the year rolled over to 2000, computer would think it was 1900, which would have had a disastrous effect on those programmes that relied on time. It didn’t happen, so lots of people thought we were all scaremongering. But the reason it didn’t happen was a lot of hard work behind the scenes

I read that story and what a gorgeous lady she is!

What an age to get to at 101!

It's good that she's seen the funny side of being branded as an infant!

Thank you Lynne for that message. I was one of those who spent a long time preventing Y2K and never got the credit we deserved :-))

I haven't seen this story and, as I'm 94 soon, hope something is done before I get to 100. Or would it be easier if I popped my clogs before then?

I have the same problem when I have to insert my mother’s DoB. As she’s 104 the computers don’t accept it. As someone said they are going to have to change things as people are reaching 100 n more

My son-in-law's gran will be 110 on 14th May! She is an amazing woman but must have had to contend with this a lot. I join in thanking yggdrasil and her like for saving us from Y2K.

If it’s true then it’s just sloppy programming. I was programming for Companies House in the 1990s and we were using 3-digit codes for age way back then. Most serious programming (back then) was done in a language called COBOL (Common Business-Orientated Language) and in that the programmer specifies how many digits to use for each variable.

There were several minor Y2K problems. I made an appointment with a doctor on the 29th of February. No problem making it, but when I turned up the computer said no such date.

yggdrasil

Thank you Lynne for that message. I was one of those who spent a long time preventing Y2K and never got the credit we deserved :-))

Me too. I was a system tester and hardly saw my bed for months

I was one of those sorting out Y2K too. I really don’t understand why people are still using such sloppy coding after Y2K. It isn’t difficult to avoid the problem.

I don’t know why the programmers on here are protesting about not getting any credit. If they knew what they were doing they should have earned lots of money. Good software engineers could almost name their own price prior to Y2K.

FranA

I don’t know why the programmers on here are protesting about not getting any credit. If they knew what they were doing they should have earned lots of money. Good software engineers could almost name their own price prior to Y2K.

You misunderstand their point. It is not money they wanted, so much as an acknowledgment that without their work, we almost certainly would have had a meltdown, which could have led to planes crashing out of the sky etc. What they got instead was blanket accusations that they had been crying wolf

Just thinking - when I worked re a prescribing database online in order to cope with correct dosages re children we used months - not years - obviously something to do with coping with the same/similar issue ?

GrammarGrandma

My son-in-law's gran will be 110 on 14th May! She is an amazing woman but must have had to contend with this a lot. I join in thanking yggdrasil and her like for saving us from Y2K.

Wow!
Must be the oldest woman in the UK then, if she’s in the UK?

The oldest person living in the UK is Ethel Caterham, born 21 August 1909. She’s 114 years old.