What caused the Y2K crisis?

Answer 1

In the 1960s and 1970s, computer space was expensive. One cost-cutting measure was to render the year as two digits instead of four. So, for example, a computer would recognize the year 1974 as just "74". This works great until you get to the year 2000, which the computer will render as "00" and mistake for 1900.

You see, those computers were intended to work short-term and no one expected them to still be in operation by the year 2000. But many of them were still in operation and thus had to be updated to recognize four-digit years. In the 1990s, billions of dollars were spent on this effort.

The problem was overhyped to the public as a technological apocalypse, leading to the popular perception that Y2K would cause planes to fall from the sky and other such nonsense. To this day, debates rages as to whether the money spent on Y2K prevented the crisis or if there just wasn't that much of a crisis in the first place.

Answer 2

The Y2K crisis was caused by a programming oversight in early computer systems that used two-digit year codes. These systems represented years by only using the last two digits, assuming that the first two digits would always be "19." As the year 2000 approached, it became evident that this shorthand notation would cause malfunctions and potential failures in computer systems, as they would interpret "00" as the year 1900 instead of 2000.