Did you know, Australia once recalled its almost entire embassy staff back from Russia ✈️

Not because of any diplomatic issues, but because of a software issue 👇

...

The year was 1999

There was a lot of panic and fear because of the Y2K bug 🪲

It was being speculated that the world would come to a stand still 🌑

The computers will break, the systems will stop running and so on 🌏

The major fear was for the

banking system 🏦
nuclear plants ☢️
airlines industry ✈️ and
communication systems 📡

...

If you are not aware, the problem of the Y2K bug was:

During early development of computer systems, memory space was super costly 💾

The scientists wanted the most efficient use of the available memory 💽

One of the method they used was...

For the Date & Time system they used the last two digits of the year instead of total four digits 🗓️

So, they entered 70 instead of 1970

But when the year 1999 approached...

Many feared that after 11:59 PM on 31st December 1999 the computer will increment the year by 1 and...

That means 99 will become 00

And that 00 can be interpreted as 1900 instead of 2000

If that happened, then of course the fear was real 😨

Makes sense? Keep reading.

...

The entire world went crazy 💢

The US, the UK, Australia and others invested huge sums of money to fix the issue 💲

(The solution to the problem was fairly simple though, but more on that later)

But some countries like Italy, South Korea, Russia, didn't invest much to fix the issue

...

🪫 Due to the fear of transportation system collapse and the unavailability communication system...

🇦🇺 Australia called its almost entire 🇷🇺 Russian embassy staff back at home

But there was a twist

...

It came out that, the Y2K bug was not a major problem

All it needed was, memory space be increased to occupy four places instead of two 🤌

Apart for some minor issues worldwide, no major systems were affected

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As a software developer, many a times a solution to a complex problem is fairly simple 🔑

Just take a break, and come back at it again 🔐

And approach it from a different perspective

...

If you happen to be working on a side idea, do check my previous post