Y-2010
When I read stories like this, I end up feeling a whole lot better about my own code. An astonishing number of systems had trouble with the changeover from 2009 to 2010:
Chips used in bank cards to identify account numbers could not read the year 2010 properly, making it impossible for ATMs and point of sale machines in Germany to read debit cards of 30 million people since New Year's Day, according to published reports. The workaround is to reprogram the machines so the chips don't have to deal with the number.
To get that, you would have to have your software assume the first three digits of the year and just add the last one - apparently, some developer just assumed "of course this won't be running in 2010". The hilarious part is that this happened so soon after the whole "just assume the leading 19" thing from the last century's software...
Comments
The hilarious part is
[HKN] January 7, 2010 3:29:49.727
that the cards are *new*, handed out just last year...
Not so funny if you had one of those cards.
[anonymous] January 7, 2010 17:08:17.285
While its an amusing IT 'bug', think of the many thousands of people travelling who find that they can't access their funds to pay their bills because some IT Dumbo does not understand DATES !! I would not like to be travelling Europe/USA right now without access to funds to get out of the cold & eat.
Its errors like this that continue to place IT systems so far away from being Software Engineering. No wonder Joe Average distrusts anything to do with 'computers'.
Just consider the recent blog postings about handling MONEY under Smalltalk, if it wasn't so pathetic that after 50+ years Smalltalk ( and other mainstream languages) still can't handle MONEY seamlessly it would be amusing. Everybody uses MONEY.