The opportunity of a millennium [Year 2000 problem

Abstract

The authors discuss the origins of the Year 2000 problem. They consider how the millennium problem goes much deeper than programmers setting two digit date fields. It is related to abstraction, information hiding, modularity, and reuse. In other words, the problem concerns the set of fundamental software engineering issues that object technology addresses. Because the conversion effort is so huge and expensive, it is silly to make it just a Year 2000 conversion effort. This is where crisis can become opportunity. Some companies, which unfortunately appear to be only a minority so far, have already understood the Y2K conversion for what it is: a once-in-a-lifetime chance to rip apart mission-critical enterprise applications and prepare them for the future and its inevitable surprises.