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From Mel Earp, Macclesfield, Cheshire, UK

I was both pleased and horrified by the article on Q-Day (25 April, p 10).

Pleased, because the coverage and comparison with Y2K was accurate and measured, unlike some who declared it a hoax when, after the event, not that much went publicly wrong. I know it wasn’t fake because, like many software professionals of my era, I both contributed to the creation of the problem in the late 1970s and early 80s, and was involved in fixing it in the late 90s. Yes, some of the reporting was overblown – aircraft wouldn’t have fallen out of the sky on the stroke of midnight – but had we not largely fixed it in time, there would have been real disruption with the likes of reservation and scheduling systems and, as with the Q-Day problem, banking systems.

Horrified, because the Q-Day problem is real and has been known about for a few years, yet there doesn’t seem to be the same urgency that was generated for Y2K. I sincerely hope that I live to read the headline on the day after Q-Day – “What was all the fuss about?” or, more succinctly, “Q-Day was Quiet-Day”.