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Time to Dump Time Zones

nytimes.com

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Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#101

Post by wsinks »

salmon30salmon wrote: post #87
cyberferret wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the current concept of time is also based on the outdated industrial age concept of a 'working day' being 9-5. I doubt many of the people on HN for instance, work those set hours in this day and age. Nowadays it is purely a convenience factor to keep the worker drones in the same hive so they can gather for the next interminable meeting. With the rise of remote working, and other forms of communication tools, no…

For those who live in our Ivory Tower of the software industry that may be true, but the 9-5 concept is not outdated for a vast majority of working humans on the planet. Lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world.

So far you have the most levelheaded comment I've seen (out of 4... not a big sample size), but just wanted to agree.

We all need to get off our high horse and be more specific, at the risk of smaller readership. For global teams that are making software, GMT / 24 hour clocks are great. But lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world. I love that comment!

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#102

Post by powvans »

I've spent the last several years developing applications that have calendaring at the core, where users collaborate across timezones, and where proper timezone handling is expected.

Just try to explain to everyday people just how hard the problem is, the technical in and out, the practical miracle that it all works in almost all the cases, that all the error prone complexity can be eliminated by acknowledging that it's the same time everywhere all the time. They will not understand and they will not care. They will most likely consider you crazy. Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

We implement technical solutions to hard problems in order to simplify daily life for the 99.9% of people who do not care about things like timezones. Not withstanding the elimination of DST, this article is asking for the opposite. Furthermore, behind the scenes we already deal with time in the agreed upon standard.

If your dates are not stored in UTC in your database, you are doing it wrong. If your API and client software do not deal in dates in UTC, you are doing it wrong. If your dates are not localized when displayed to end users, you probably have very unhappy users.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#103

Post by edblarney »

derefr wrote: post #94
edblarney wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ambassadors, frequent travellers and military officers would still rather use local time. And they make up 0.1% of the population. UTC would severely screw up the other 99.9%. The military will use UTC when necessary, as will computer nerds like us. FYI - a very long time ago, I was a 'military officer'. We used local time unless it was necessary. UTC is a very counterintuitive concept. You day changes midday. Your t…

What kind of military officer? I was mostly picturing the kind that did long-haul submarine excursions and had no sense of local time anyway. :)

I was a Field Engineer.

People in submarines ... they live on 'rotation schedules' and the entire crew might be divided into 3 different 'sleep shifts'.

And as for time - who knows.

They can use UTC, surely they do for many things - that's why UTC exists - for those who need it.

For 99.9% of the real world, we want local time.

FYI - the '12 hour' thing is a little arbitrary. Napoleon, who instituted a vast array of reforms in Europe that are still in place today, including to a great extent the 'metric system' - tried to institute 'metric time' as well, i.e. 10 hour days.

Didn't go so well, the people revolted/laughed away at that one.

Some things are pretty 'backed in' to culture.

Time is one of them.

Granted I will admit one thing: I live in Montreal, and like the French, the use a 24 system. So coffee shop closes at 19:00. Which means '7 pm'. Which is hard to get used to!

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#104

Post by M_Grey »

jamesrom wrote: post #64
M_Grey wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^This. Lets tackle the thing that's definitely a good idea, and much easier to manage before shooting for the metaphorical moon.

Why is it definitely a good idea?

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/03/time-to-...

Honestly though, just Googling, "Daylight savings bad" yields a wealth of result at this time of year.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#105

Post by cyberferret »

grzm wrote: post #90
gwbas1c wrote: post #41

Ok, pretty much every comment here is about why time zones are important. I agree! But one thing to ponder: Just like telling time in 24-hour mode is useful, perhaps it will be useful to have some clocks display UTC? Perhaps it'll be useful to talk about international events in UTC? Perhaps instead of abolishing time zones, we just use UTC as a convention when talking about events that happen across time zones?

"use UTC as a convention when talking about events that happen across time zones" For coordination of events across time zones , perhaps. Would you really want to read international events happening in UTC in the news? In the local time I can put the event in context: is it evening? morning? Middle of the night? If it were UTC, I'd have to either look that up and do some mental math (or maybe the reading device, if I…

It absolutely fixes one of the biggest planning problems I come across all the time (as someone who follows international sporting fixtures a fair bit).

If I hear "The US Formula 1 GP will be starting at 2pm local time", I have to then go through multiple steps as follows in order to ensure that I can watch it:

1. Ok, WHERE is the US F1GP being held?

2. I have to identify which timezone Austin, Texas is in

3. I have to figure out if that timezone incorporates daylight saving and whether DST is in effect or not.

4. I then have to do the convoluted maths to work out local time - HOPING that I have access to a computer which can do the conversion for me, or else convert Austin time to UTC then UTC to my time manually in my head.

You are adding locality and timezones into an already complex equation.

Or, if someone said "The US Formula 1 GP starts at 20:00 UTC", then all I need do is:

1. Add 09:30 to that start time to ensure I tune in to the broadcast and don't miss the moment Charlie Whiting flips the lights to green.

A lot of the arguments here talk about mutually suitable times, but in a lot of cases, it DOESN'T HAVE to be mutually beneficial. You will rarely find a 'mutually beneficial' time for everyone even if your are in the SAME time zone. There is always a skewing of the priorities that means one party will not care if the time is convenient - they just know they want to be there and not miss it.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#106

Post by 21 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #41

Ok, pretty much every comment here is about why time zones are important. I agree! But one thing to ponder: Just like telling time in 24-hour mode is useful, perhaps it will be useful to have some clocks display UTC? Perhaps it'll be useful to talk about international events in UTC? Perhaps instead of abolishing time zones, we just use UTC as a convention when talking about events that happen across time zones?

Those who care about these things already do it.

http://www.acclaimimages.com/_gallery/_free_images/0519-1009...

http://www.proav.com/images/6026aa2c94.jpg

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#108

Post by cyberferret »

wsinks wrote: post #101
salmon30salmon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who live in our Ivory Tower of the software industry that may be true, but the 9-5 concept is not outdated for a vast majority of working humans on the planet. Lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world.

So far you have the most levelheaded comment I've seen (out of 4... not a big sample size), but just wanted to agree. We all need to get off our high horse and be more specific, at the risk of smaller readership. For global teams that are making software, GMT / 24 hour clocks are great. But lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world. I love that comment!

The opposite is also true - don't imagine a 1930's production line factory or bank clerk as the reality of a majority employee population working day.

Farmers, truck drivers, pilots, bakers, hospitality workers, nurses, street sweepers, security guards and a thousand other jobs are NOT bound to a 9-5 working time. Indeed, outside of government or large corporations, I struggle to find many professions that ARE bound (or have to BE bound) to these hours.

Re: Time to Dump Time Zones

#109

Post by hrktb »

salmon30salmon wrote: post #87
cyberferret wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the current concept of time is also based on the outdated industrial age concept of a 'working day' being 9-5. I doubt many of the people on HN for instance, work those set hours in this day and age. Nowadays it is purely a convenience factor to keep the worker drones in the same hive so they can gather for the next interminable meeting. With the rise of remote working, and other forms of communication tools, no…

For those who live in our Ivory Tower of the software industry that may be true, but the 9-5 concept is not outdated for a vast majority of working humans on the planet. Lets not project our reality onto the rest of the world.

I think this could be a good impetus to get rid of that. Right now the concept of 9-5 is often adopted by pure inertia even when there is no reason to do so. The day we'll have to all translate the current '9-5' to a different number, it will be a serious chance to reevaluate if that's appropriate.

For instance my place has a requirement on being there around 9:30 in the morning even though we should be part of the "Ivory Tower" club you mention since we actually work day in day out with people on different time zones.

Same with public services opening at 9h an ending at 18h, forcing everyone else to open holes in their schedule to get there.

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