JavaScript Temporal is coming

#1

Post by SigmundurM » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 11:28 AM UTC

JavaScript Temporal is coming
developer.mozilla.org

Re: JavaScript Temporal is coming

#2

Post by TheAceOfHearts » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 12:10 PM UTC

They should add an event to detect when someone changes timezones. That could be another entry in the "falsehoods that programmers believe about time": programmers believe that your timezone is fixed during usage. But in reality there are millions of people moving between timezones every day.

Re: JavaScript Temporal is coming

#3

Post by arnaudsm » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 12:10 PM UTC

Relevant XKCD : https://xkcd.com/2867/

Re: JavaScript Temporal is coming

#4

Post by srameshc » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 12:15 PM UTC

If the time zone handling can be added like Golang time package, that would make it very convenient.

Re: JavaScript Temporal is coming

#5

Post by codeflo » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 12:15 PM UTC

At first glance, this seems to be in the JodaTime/NodaTime/Js-Joda tradition of representing different "granularities" of date and time information with distinct types, e.g. with and without timezone information. I'm not sure if there's a formal relationship, since this seems to use different names.

I personally like that approach, but I'm not sure how much sense that makes without static typing. (Maybe TypeScript is established enough that JavaScript APIs are now designed with TypeScript in mind?)

From experience with js-joda, there's a definitely learning curve compared to moment's "one size fits all" type for all things date related. But I found that a lot of stupid mistakes of the kind "a person's age is wrong for an hour after midnight during daylight savings time" are prevented by default.

Re: JavaScript Temporal is coming

#6

Post by nejsjsjsbsb » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 12:16 PM UTC

Coming but only available in one browser or run time, and then with a feature flag.

Re: JavaScript Temporal is coming

#7

Post by barrettondricka » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 12:16 PM UTC

arnaudsm wrote: post #3

Relevant XKCD : https://xkcd.com/2867/

Relevant Tom Scott video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY

Re: JavaScript Temporal is coming

#8

Post by nejsjsjsbsb » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 12:18 PM UTC

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #2

They should add an event to detect when someone changes timezones. That could be another entry in the "falsehoods that programmers believe about time": programmers believe that your timezone is fixed during usage. But in reality there are millions of people moving between timezones every day.

If you are on a plane or ISS you could even be timezoneless.

Re: JavaScript Temporal is coming

#9

Post by antihero » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 12:20 PM UTC

nejsjsjsbsb wrote: post #6

Coming but only available in one browser or run time, and then with a feature flag.

There's a polyfill in the meantime.

Re: JavaScript Temporal is coming

#10

Post by noduerme » Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 12:23 PM UTC

Future generations will no doubt remember this announcement as a revolutionary leap into a brighter future. But I'm sure I'll still be using Moment.js ten years from now the way I'm still using JQuery 3.x now.

Javascript is all we have for front end web apps now, impoverished as it is as a language. But excuse me if I don't get excited every time a proposal is rolled out to bring it close to the 21st century.