51–60 of 221 posts
Imagine if 12AM meant 12 noon. What would one second past 12 noon be? It'd have to be 12:00:01 PM. Even one millisecond past 12 noon would be PM. So "12AM" could only exist for an infinitesimal length of time, in contrast to 11AM, 10AM etc. which each last for an hour.
I always look it up on Google. I regularly run into this kind of problem when looking at log files which use AM/PM time. Related question: How do you even say "14:00" in English? In school I learned that you say o'clock but I never heard that in real life.
When working at international companies that have little interaction between countries (i.e. not so much that it would be standardized, but enough that it would be an issue): eventually everyone learns to write dates and times in both ways (14:00 / 2pm, 4/12 / 12 April). The Europeans think that they're translating for the "dumb Americans who can't count higher than 12", the Americans think they're translating for th…
How often does this actually happen? It’s never been common for my European coworkers or my American ones. I rarely schedule meetings with Europe in the Eastern TZ afternoon and the same with India. If I say I’m deploying at 11pm on Saturday everyone understands.
I always look it up on Google. I regularly run into this kind of problem when looking at log files which use AM/PM time. Related question: How do you even say "14:00" in English? In school I learned that you say o'clock but I never heard that in real life.
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For example:
...the discount expires at 11:59 P.M. on Thursday, March 24, 2022.
is far less confusing than:
...the discount expires at 12:00 A.M. on Friday, March 25, 2022.
At a quick glance, it's easy to think this means late Friday night, since we see the word Friday.
A lot of my exams will use the time 11:59pm instead of 12:00am to avoid confusion like this
It's possible to mix up dates and times from each other too (is 12.30 Dec 30 or half past noon?)
That sounds really frustrating. I'm sorry that happened to you. Time is a hard programming and engineering problem. Adopting a global UTC on a 24 hour clock would resolve most of this, but people are entrenched.
Solves so many problems.
Now, Django supports this pretty cleanly so it's often pretty easy to enforce and work with.
Look at an analog 12-hour clock. Ask yourself what the "natural" way to read it at midnight would be (what number is the hour hand pointing towards)?
The Ante Meridian / Post Meridian explanation works better. Still, it is a fucked way to say time.
By the way 24h analog clocks exist too.