The Millennium Bug -- Just a Hype or a Serious Problem That Was Solved on Time?
Background and problem: The millennium bug is also known as the year 2000 problem (or just Y2K). It resulted from the practice of of abbreviating a four-digit year to only two digits. Shortly before the year 2000 it was assumed that many computer programs would become problems with logical errors arising upon the rollover from 99 to 00. Without corrections it was suggested that long-working computer systems would break down and stop to work. People thought that it would take weeks and month to get the computer run again and that industrial processes would be strongly disturbed. Many companies worldwide checked, fixed, and upgraded their computer systems.
When the year rolled over into 2000 no significant computer failures occurred globally. Even so the Y2K problem strongly influenced the computer industry. It is believed that there were lots of problems related to Y2K. But only very few of these malfunctions lead to major breakdowns because of previous preparation.
However there is still the question whether the absence of major computer failures was a result of this preparation or whether the Y2K problem was overstated from the beginning.
Task: The task is to find academic and scientific literature about the Y2K problem and to discuss this question. The main objective of this work is literature analysis.
Supervisor: Dr. Ing. Mathias Magdowski