The system that I remediated for Y2K was originally written in 1978 and owed its architecture to the transaction master update magnetic tape technology of the late 1960s. The system had been written for the US complete with 50 state and 10 province (Canada} flags and bodgied along for the next 30 years by people who were programming themselves into a job for life.

However in 1994 Arther Andersen, Andersen Consulting, Accenture got the contract to write the Metlink Melbourne public transport ticketing system. It was not Y2K compliant, the dates were in the format dd/mm/yy.

I notice that the author claims to be a member of the Australian Computer Society, whose tag line is "ICT Professionals Shaping Our Future".

From the ACS Membership page:

"ACS membership implies a commitment to professionalism.

True professionalism demands continuing knowledge and skills development, backed by an underlying commitment to a Code of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct and Practice."

I suspect they might be a little unhappy about this article, and the way it reflects upon their organization. It is a shoddy piece of work indeed.

It manages to make a mockery of their slogan as well as their principles. Quite an achievement.

Mr Abood - Next time, try putting your fish in a bigger barrel.

Bloody pointless to bring y2k up in this context. I see no parallel to global warming.

However... we worked on y2k and fixed stuff. Perhaps the main reason that consultants were used, in some cases, was because in-house staff were refusing to make the minor changes (your claim, not mine) that would have provided peace of mind.

But in either case. Global warming is another area. What we say about y2k is not relevant.

This article is on the money. Having worked in IT for over 20 years I had never seen such a debacle over a minor issue that was not all that prevalent. Those who are criticizing the author obviously have no idea what it was all (not) about.

I know, perhaps someone could make a documentary called the Great Y2K Swindle. Then the ABC can have an angst ridden discussion as to whether or not to screen it. Only deciding to do so on the condition a panel discussion happen immediately afterwards in order to carefully explain to their precious viewers why it isn't so.