That left 78 characters on the punch cards we then used to express everything else. Things in the computer industry have changed enormously in the thirty-six years since then, with computer hardware becoming cheaper and more powerful, and the software programs that make it work growing larger and more complex. The memory required just to load Microsoft s latest word processing program, for example, would have cost more than thirty million dollars in 1969. The advances in information technology have not been entirely positive. As a result, computer programs are among the most complex things ever built by man.
Computer programs are never perfect, but they are at their worst when they are new.
The current plan requires changing hundreds of billions of lines of old, reliable program code into new, improved, and untested code. Problem is unique. The deadline cannot be slipped, and there is no fallback. When Denver and Hong Kong had problems with their new airport baggage handling program they were able to use their old airports until they straightened them out. In the case of Y2K, when the new program has problems, it will not be possible to go back to the old one.