When you're 100 years old

For yggdrasil, yes, in my working days, I was on several projects where companies had woken up to the fact that just 2 digits for the year would cause a problem (numbers are usually right-justified, so moving say 2001 into a year 'field' (space, slot, storage capacity, etc) would drop the 20, and leave the 01. Which causes problems.

Lots of firms had quite old systems, written when computers were just coming in, and back then, storage space was quite precious, and it likely seemed a good idea to only use 2 digits for the year (I expect nobody who wrote the systems thought they'd still be in use after 2000.

For Left-handed, yes, COBOL was widely used (and still is, for old systems that would cost fortunes to rewrite!). But you miss the point, it's probably not an 'age' field that is the issue, but back in the mists of IBM and ICL time, when disk storage was precious, also the methods for inputting data, it might have been very tempting to only have a 2 digit year in a date -- those writing those ancient systems probably never thought they'd still be in use after 2000. WHY this latest problem has arisen, sorry, I've not read the details. But it sounds like some IT Dept has been VERY careless!

And for FranA - "should have made lots of money at Y2K" - those of us who worked at software houses got no extra payments for that work, it was just another assignment (unless the volume of work required overtime).

We have a centenarian living opposite us. He puts his longevity down to getting out and walkin a mile everyday. You can see him out and walking around the village most days.

I have noted this fact and am taking it up myself. I still have 20 years to go.

It was many people in IT who worked round the clock to prevent the anticipated 2000 disaster. I remember my husband having to sign a disclaimer of some sort because he was working way over 50 hours a week. Something to do with EU regulations, I think? It was disheartening to hear the dismissive attitudes when it didn't all go wrong, with no comprehension that it only didn't because so many people worked on practice scenarios until they'd covered every possibility.

What would have happened if nobody had averted the disaster, please?
I can't get my head around how it would have played out.