As someone who is often bemused by a computer,can anyone out there tell me more about the nitty gritty of Y2K remediation.Nearly everyday,I have to visually check approx 500 sheets of blank paper for flaws.I can tell you this is pretty boring but does demand a sustained level of concentration over a period of about 5 hours. It struck me that the level of concentration must be the same. Is correcting a line of code pretty simple ? Forgive my ignorance !

-- Chris (griffen@globalnet.co.uk), March 22, 1999

Answers

Fixing Y2K problems is boring as hell. Everybody avoids it where possible.

-- Anonymous99 (Anonymous99@anonymous.com), March 22, 1999.

Have you ever untangled a long, long hose that has a lot of inexplicable knots and twists? Now think of a couple hundred individually tangled hoses tangled with each other. Oh yes, there is this small matter of a fire and if you don't get this somewhat fixed (untangled with each hose connected just so) the house will burn down. Get ready ---- go.

-- RD. ->H (drherr@erols.com), March 22, 1999.

So I guess if, and I quote somewhat inaccurately, "a young programmer who has been brought up on a diet of Nintendo games and has the attention span of a gnat" is doing remediation work,then the chances are that testing will not go very well ??????

Or am I wrong ??

I also heard that fixing code was rather like putting in a new part in an old car.The new part,by itself so to speak, could then cause other older parts to fail.I know ALL about this as our LandRover is 25 years old.

-- Chris (griffen@globalnet.co.uk), March 22, 1999.

Hi Chris. "Is correcting a line of code pretty simple ?". Yes, it is. Finding the one to fix isn't. Making sure you didn't break something else when you fixed it isn't. Making sure you really did fix it isn't. Shall I continue? <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), March 22, 1999.

Excerpt from "The Devil's DP Dictionary"

One-line Patch: A kludge so trivial that no testing is necessary. Repaired with another one-line patch. See Recursion.

Recursion: See recursion.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), March 22, 1999.

I'm beginning to get the picture.Because of our papermaking skills we have been named "National Living Treasures" but I guess you guys deserve the title more than us at the moment.Many thanks for your replies.

-- Chris (griffen@globalnet.co.uk), March 23, 1999.