this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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Or we could do metric time (files.catbox.moe)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 154 points 7 months ago (3 children)

As a software dev who has lost weeks of his life dealing with timezones, leap days, daylight savings time, date math and other associated nonsense I fully support this being the way the world is. I don't want to go through the transition to get there though

[–] [email protected] 78 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Bad news: this has nothing to do with timezones, leap days nor daylight saving time. Honestly, leap days would be worse because they wouldn't be part of the 7 day week

[–] [email protected] 32 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

It's accounted for just like any other leap year, add it to the end of a month as a universal holiday. Most calendar models make it July 29. It's also worth noting that this is actually 364 days, and a single day at the end of the year is a universal holiday.

Edit: I think leap years should be at the end of the year too for simplicity.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That would just be new year. I've already have a list ready for how to name all the months, so we don't fuck it up like September being the 9. Month again.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ooh, tell me what the names would be! Don't leave me hanging. I HATE that September - December are all off.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)
  • Firstber
  • Secondary
  • Thurd
  • Quadtober
  • Cincondary
  • Sextember
  • Septober
  • Octuary
  • Nonuary
  • Tenber
  • Postenber
  • Expostenber
  • June
[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Sextember

Nice.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Wheezed at this, thanks

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Which breaks "day of week = day modulo 7" if every month starts on Monday and not every month has the same number of days

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

In this scheme, new years day and leap days are not any day of the week or part of any month. They exist outside of the regular calendar as obvious and explicit resets to the remainder problem.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

My point exactly. So the programmer who commented above me is wrong in saying it makes it easier for them

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

No, still easier. They are still part of the year, so you can just count them, and the logic is still easier than the mess we currently have. If you really feel the need to you can call new years day the zeroth day in the zeroth month, the day of the week is Holiday, and periodically the zeroth month has one extra Holiday.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Computers store the date as "days after January 1st 1970". So you have a huge number, divide it with 7 and get the day of the week. If there are days that don't belong to any week, you have to calculate January 1st of that year and substrate it in addition to the steps above. I don't say it's not manageable, but it's not easier

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They store the number of seconds since the epoch of 1970, but you're always going to have leap days and even leap seconds. Even if you changed the definition of a second to match the current length of a year, it would be off again relatively soon and you'd need leap seconds again. It's NEVER going to be as simple as you seem to think it should be. Chaos and complexity is inherent in the whole system.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I never said it was simple. The comment above me was "oh, this makes it much easier" and I was like "it's not really getting easier". That's all I said.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes, I understood. I still disagree for the reasons in all of my previous comments.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

Let's agree to disagree

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Look, short of changing Earth's orbit, something's not gonna line up no matter what you do. Extra-weekly days are as good a compromise as any in my book.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

There is also a technological solution, I knew it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Leap day and new year day are supposed to not be a week day in this system

[–] [email protected] -4 points 7 months ago

My point exactly. So the programmer who commented above me is wrong in saying it makes it easier for them

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Just make them holidays, everyone works too much anyway, and it's just getting worse for no reason.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Leap day gets it's own name outside of saturday through sunday. It's an all awesome holiday.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

... which fucks with the way the day of the week is calculated by computers as I already explained others

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Y2k was handled. This can be too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Didn't say it's not manageable, just said it's not easier

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Developers are the only people against DST changes, just because of how complex it will get. Dear God cities are removing DST! Cities! It means I need to know if you are in or out of a city to know if you need to be shown daylight or standard time!

Just please do it nationally yes or no

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Write everything in UTC, cast to local time zone for UIs

Life problems solved

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

That's essentially what I did in my recent UI that I made for someone.

  • You want to insert date time
  • Select method: UTC, Time Zone, offset from GMT
  • Enter time
  • I convert it to UTC and send to backend
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That... still requires knowing which time zone to display. It doesn't remove the requirement at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

.localtime(utctime)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

and who implements localtime? You realize these functions call down to the system, and the system is very much ALSO written and maintained by coders...

The point is SOMEONE actually does have to implement it and maintain it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Dear God cities are removing DST! Cities! It means I need to know if you are in or out of a city to know if you need to be shown daylight or standard time!

That's why it's lucky that identifiers in the tz database are already things like America/New_York instead of "eastern time."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Newfoundland has only just over 500k population and has a nice GMT-2:30 time zone. That's an extra half hour difference. Many cities are larger so I can see them wanting better time for themselves.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Ugh. Any time I need to set up a meeting for IST.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

thank you for your service, i usually resort to libraries doing the heavy lifting but even then it's tough and prone to error