Friendly critique of Ben's post
First off, my position on all this: I'm not an alarmist, just someone that believes that Y2K will generate somewhere between a moderate recession and a 30's style depression. We will survive, but it could get uncomfortable for a while... After it's all over we will (eventually) be better off than before.
First of all, Bill never says that the Y2K problem does not exist.
In his most recent post, he said it was 100% hoax.
He correctly identified it as a fairly typical software maintenance problem. Unusually widespread to be sure, but a straight forward problem
This is true. But, any idiot knows that. :-)
that is not too difficult to fix if the programmer knows the application.
This is misleading a bit. It's not difficult, just extremely time consuming. Plus, the smart programmers that know the application have moved on to better things while the dumb ones have been downsized.
As such, like most maintenance issues, it does not lend itself to solution by software packages, code generators or roaming consultants.
correct again. It is best fixed by those who are not available.
It is best dealt with by in-house staff,
Not most companies in-house staff :-)
the very same people who make the myriad of changes that are continually required due to changes in company policy, union contracts, government regulation, etc.
Partially true. The support crew for applications requiring ongoing modifications are staffed at levels for these relatively small changes. This is probably not enough people to fix all date related code.
Not mentioned is that the schedules are seldom met for these normal maintenance activities, so we have little hope that all the fixes will be completed on time for a larger Y2K effort.
What the Y2K companies were selling was a lie based on a truth,
but a lie nevertheless. Bill exposed this lie.
Not really. If you have an old COBOL app, and all the developers have gone, some of the tools these companies offer can increase your productivity in making Y2K fixes. If you no longer have any people left to maintain the code, some of these companies can provide bodies to re-work the code. Why else has the salaries for COBOL programmers more than doubled in the past two years? If you have lost the source code, you will need some sort of code generator. I have had personal experience with this. It is extremely time consuming...
See I'm not really an alarmist:
With all this, I still have faith that private industry should find a way to muddle through all the resulting mess.
But have some concerns:
Can any reasonable person have more than zero faith for poorly managed government infrastructure systems such as the FAA Air Traffic COntrol system. Just that one system [down for 6 months] could really mess up our economy for a while. |
