

Year 2038 problem - l33tbro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

======
archgrove
As an early 30s programmer with low-level backend experience, I'm relying on
the 2038 problem to form the backbone of my retirement income. I've already
started writing the business plan for my migration consultancy.

This comment is only marginally tongue in cheek.

------
andrewstuart
Since no-one runs the code I write this is not going to matter.

~~~
jaibot
Predicting code use in advance is hard. Linux was a casual side project not
meant to be taken seriously; Javascript was hacked together in a few weeks.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
PHP was hacked together quickly to help Rasmus Lerdorf write his website.

~~~
iLoch
Ahh, interesting to see the PHP mindset was born with its creation: _Why would
I use someone else 's code when I can write it myself?_

Mind you, that's not PHP's fault - seems that a lot of novice programmers take
this approach, with PHP being an easy beginner language.

~~~
Sanddancer
To be fair, when PHP was written, there was pretty much no other code.

------
mcv
Back when I first heard about this, I wondered if it wouldn't be possible to
simpy add an extra byte to the date. That would last us until the end of the
universe.

I still don't know enough about OSs to know how feasible it is, but back then,
the move towards 64 bit OSs seemed like a great opportunity to make this
change. Maybe when we move to 128 bit systems we can finally do this? I'd like
not to postpone this until the last minute like last time.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Adding another byte would only make it last another ~17000 years, not until
the end of the universe.

~~~
weswalker125
That, or he's not too optimistic about the lifespan of our universe :\

------
mseebach
It seems that Y2K was mostly painful because tons of data interchange formats
specified two-digit years and fixing it meant getting it fixed at all
endpoints at the same time.

Basically beginning with XML in the 1990s, the "modern world" is rapidly
converging on accepting full, textual dates (preferably in one of the ISO 8601
formats) in any but the most private and short-lived of formats (protobufs and
the like). These textual formats are obviously not vulnerable to the 2038
issue, so preparing for 2038 will be significantly easier, as it can be done
unilaterally, without all the coordination overhead.

~~~
ygra
You'd be surprised in how many places unixtime crops up. I'd really prefer ISO
8601 (especially becase it's a sane format, human-readable and supports time
zones) though.

------
Gilly_LDN
>> The furthest time that can be represented this way is 03:14:07 UTC on
Tuesday, 19 January 2038 (2147483647 seconds after January 1st, 1970).

I do hate bugs that only pop up at 3am in the morning.

As I understand it, the problem is more in the compiler/interpreter than in
the storage medium. Say, your using mysql to hold an int field - to alter the
storage allocation to include more bytes is simple, even trivial. It is the
language which will need to be updated to understand that it is using an
unsigned integer for the unix epoch.

------
SimpleXYZ
You can see this bug if you have a Roku. The popular instant watch browser app
shows Netflix TV shows arriving in 2038.

------
feketegy
By 2038 I don't think this will matter

~~~
jaibot
"By 2000 I don't think this will matter."

\- 1978

~~~
LeonM
Well, seriously, how much did it really matter in 2000? How much systems from
the 70's were still in use in the year 2k? And how much of them actually
failed? Even my IBM 8086 was y2k compliant.

I do know some people (even those who had no technical background or
whatsoever) that made ridiculous amounts of money by "consulting" about the
y2k problem.

My retirement plan is consulting on the y2k38 problem. However, as opposed to
the y2k witch-hunt, this problem is very real. Preparing systems to be y2k38
ready actually requires work to be done...

~~~
chrismcb
The y2K problem was very real as well. A lot of the systems were still in
place, and a TON of work happened at the end of the 90s to solve the y2K
problem. The fact that not many of them failed showed the success of the
Herculean effort to solve the problem.

------
emocakes
seems like someone is just learning to program...

~~~
c16
The HN community thanks you for this well thought out and high quality
comment. You have clearly shown us some knowledgeable information for which we
are truly grateful.

In all seriousness, comments such as this degrade the community and add no
value. Please reconsider next time.

~~~
ozh
The comment isn't interesting but the question behind it is quite legit: it's
odd to say the least that a post like this would surface on the front page,
here where you'd assume most if not all are already aware of it. It'd be
interesting to know why.

~~~
mseebach
Why would you assume that?

Do you have a list of other topics that are so obvious that no Hacker News
community member can possibly gain any value what so ever from reading about
them?

