On Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 4:56 PM Avi Gross <avigr...@verizon.net> wrote: > > Larry, > > I keep hearing similar things about the Flu Vaccine. It only works 40% of > the time or whatever. But most of the people that get the flu get a > different strain they were not vaccinated against!
That seems like a complete non-sequitur. What does that have to do with Y2K? But I will tell you something: I've never had a flu vaccine in my life and I've never had the flu. And I will tell you something else: I have proof that worrying works - 99% of the things I worry about never happen, so it must work. And please stop top posting. > There are hundreds of strains out there and by protecting the herd against > just a few, others will flourish. So was it worth it? > > Your argument would be that your work found lots of things related to Y2000 > that could have been a problem and therefore never got a chance to show. I > wonder if anyone did a case study and found an organization that refused to > budge and changed nothing, not even other products that were changed like > the OS? If such organizations had zero problems, that would be interesting. > If they had problems and rapidly had their software changed or fixed, that > would be another and we could ask if the relative cost and consequence made > such an approach cheaper. > > But in reality, I suspect that many of the vendors supplying products made > the change for all their clients. I bet Oracle might have offered some > combination of new and improved products to replace old ones or tools that > could be used to say read in a database in one format and write it out again > with wider date fields. > > The vast difference some allude to is realistic. Y2K swept the globe in > about 24 hours. No easy way to avoid it for many applications. Someone > running python 2.X on their own machines may be able to continue living in > their bubble for quite a while. If you sell or share a product with python > frozen into an app, it makes no difference. But asking some clients to > maintain multiple copies of python set up so one app keeps running as all > others use the newer one, may not remain a great solution indefinitely. > > Has anyone considered something that may be at the edges. How well do > cooperating programs work together? I mean if program one processes and > saves some data structures using something like pickle, and program two is > supposed to read the pickle back in and continue processing, then you may > get anomalies of many kinds if they use different pythons. Similarly, > processes that start up other scripts and communicate with them, may need to > start newer programs that use the 3.X or beyond version as no back-ported > version exists. The bubble may enlarge and may eventually burst. > > -----Original Message----- > From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+avigross=verizon....@python.org> On > Behalf Of Larry Martell > Sent: Friday, January 18, 2019 10:47 AM > To: Python <python-list@python.org> > Subject: Re: Pythonic Y2K > > On Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 10:43 AM Michael Torrie <torr...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On 01/16/2019 12:02 PM, Avi Gross wrote: > > > I recall the days before the year 2000 with the Y2K scare when > > > people worried that legacy software might stop working or do > > > horrible things once the clock turned. It may even have been scary > > > enough for some companies to rewrite key applications and even switch > from languages like COBOL. > > > > Of course it wasn't just a scare. The date rollover problem was very > > real. It's interesting that now we call it the Y2K "scare" and since > > most things came through that okay we often suppose that the people > > who were warning about this impending problem were simply being > > alarmist and prophets of doom. We often deride them. But the fact > > is, people did take these prophets of doom seriously and there was a > > massive, even heroic effort, to fix a lot of these critical backend > > systems so that disaster was avoided (just barely). I'm not talking > > about PCs rolling over to 00. I'm talking about banking software, > > mission critical control software. It certainly was scary enough for > > a lot of companies to spend a lot of money rewriting key software. > > The problem wasn't with COBOL necessarily. > > I had one client, a hedge fund, that I fixed literally 1000's of Y2K issues > for. When Y2K came and there were no problems, the owner said to me "You > made such a big deal about the Y2K thing, and nothing happened." -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list