Y2K issue was principially caused by the need to save disk space/storage in relation to dates - as mentioned already storing a date of DD/MM/YY requires less space that that of a date of DD/MM/YYYY - i.e. you would be saving a two bytes for every date on every record - as mentioned when disc space was limited/expensive this was the norm. Prior
Prior to Y2K activity (late 90s) I had to work on a 1980 date issue -, because our systems that were in use would remove the decade part of the year and then pack the date i.e. the date was stored as DDMMY - when. When this was saved as packed decimal this would then only require three bytes of storage - when. When ever dates needed to be printed then date was reformatted and a constant of a 7 added for the decade (i.e. date saved as S31057 - printed as 310577)- mid.
Mid 1979 we started getting statement due dates appearing with a year of 1970 instead of 1980 due to the above -, which needed remediating on the same basis as some Y2K fixes i.e. checking single part of the year date to be greater than five force a 7 if less than or equal to 5 force a 8 - this. This ensures a couple of years extra use - glad. Glad to say I left company before 1985 so don'ydon't know what naterialisedmaterialised then.
Since that time I have met older developers who say they has same issue with dated oving from the 1960s to 1970s -, although I guess not as many.