[SLUG] Re: Time Pedantry

[Daniel Pittman <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jamie Wilkinson <jaq@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> On 1 April 2010 16:56, Daniel Pittman <daniel@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Nick Andrew <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>>> On Thu, Apr 01, 2010 at 03:39:00PM +1100, Daniel Pittman wrote:
>>>
>>>> If it was my call, I would probably do the same thing.  Way too many
>>>> developers get simple things like "this day has no 2:30AM" or "this day has
>>>> two 2:00AMs" wrong.
>>>
>>> That's why Daylight Savings is fundamentally evil. Too much time data is
>>> stored in non-canonical formats.
>>
>> ...but the real question is if we love or hate the GMT/UTC difference, and
>> 23:59:61?
>
> *cough* :60 *cough*

Well, I am glad someone was on the ball enough to notice that. ;)

IIRC, :61 is actually a possible but extremely unlikely time value, to account
for two leap-second adjustments required in a year, but a quick look around
suggests that memory was wrong.  So, :60 it is.

[...]

>> (And, finally, for anyone who really wants to despair at the whole thing,
>>  I give you "The Long, Painful History of Time", which is the best write-up
>>  I know of about the engineering difficulties of the topic:
>>  http://naggum.no/lugm-time.html
>>  )
>
> I for one am glad such pages exist.  I wish the inventors of time_t had read
> it.

I wish that an awful lot of people had spent an awful lot more time looking at
what other systems around them were doing, so that I didn't have this terrible
feeling that we are finally dragging our system up to the 1980s for the second
or third time.

Ah, well.
        Daniel
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