Bug without bite

And just spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of people who devoured tomes with titles like Time Bomb 2000 and headed for remote destinations last Friday with stockpiles of food, water, firewood and all else they would require to survive when computers across the world working on a two-digit code transitioned from 8217;99 to 8217;00 and back to the dawn of the 20th century. What a waste.

What did we do soright to ensure that airplanes di-dn8217;t nosedive, that large swathes of humanity were not sent scurrying for candles amidst widespread power outages, that missiles bristling with nuclear warheads did not head for undisclosed destinations? But even as a wired world heaves a sigh of relief as its computer networks seamlessly passage into a new century, it must ask itself whether the 250 billion spent to rewrite billions of lines of code was money well spent, or whether it simply played into a trap set by the IT industry.

Over the last year, groups monitoring Y2K preparedness repeatedly pointed out that some countries were lagging way behind the more conscientious and warned that this presaged a flurry of catastrophes ahead. Both categories of countries, however, survived. Besides, even as Bill Gates wards off charges of fraud by insisting the bug may strike well after the dawn of the millennium, it does seem curious in retrospect that most of the Cassandras who said they would be stockpiling essentialshappened to be computer programmers.

A job well-done or over-done, it will never be known. But the lesson is evident. When one contrasts the successful changeover with the tremulousness with which the IT industry monitored it, it becomes clear that software personnel do not have a complete grip on the dynamics governing the worldwide computer network.

So, when the next scare comes along as it will on February 29, when computers may not easily account for the leap year there will be no option but to prepare for the worst. And certainly there will a legion of programmers waiting for these scares. For, whether Gates8217; prediction of millennium bug glitches ahead materialises or not, the IT industry is in the grip of a definite Y2K problem. With three breathless, and lucrative, years of rewriting codes at an end, thousands of software personnel find themselves out of work.

Many will no doubt be absorbed as companies now get on with the software development that was put off in the Y2K rush, but many others,more attuned to old programmes that had to be touched up, may find the transition to cutting-edge Internet software extremely turbulent. Blame it on the bug.