Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python • Hacker News Board

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#61

Post by toyg » Sat, Apr 19, 2014, 5:36 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #59

toyg wrote: post #12

It's sad to see that, in what we all consider to be an "enlightened" age for science and rationality, the calendar problem is considered a de-facto taboo, something that will never be changed. It's such an obvious legacy hack, it should be refactored with a modern and proper design, but the API is so popular that breaking it would generate unbearable amounts of stop-energy. I wish we could have a wrapper or something…

You know, the French tried to make a reform with the French Revolutionary Calendar. Having managed to kill off the monarchy and completely reshape the face of Western civilization, not even the French revolutionaries could change the calendar. (And if you want to talk about an "enlightened" age for science and rationality, the era that we refer to today as "The Enlightenment" is a much better candidate than this sorr…

They did change the calendar - Napoleon only restored the old one to appease the Catholic Church.

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#62

Post by toyg » Sat, Apr 19, 2014, 5:45 AM UTC

notdonspaulding wrote: post #57

toyg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The current system will stand, because however irrational it is, it is good enough. Exactly like a broken but popular API. It's still fundamentally bad. >Not to mention, people don't like things that aren't classified. I think there would be a lot of people that didn't like having day 365 (and 366) be unclassified as days. I think we'd all be relieved to have a separate classification space for leap days (29 Februar…

We could dedicate these days to generic "spiritual and religious celebrations" to make traditionalists happy, call it "Holy Month" or something. I can't tell if that's a serious suggestion, but if it is, I don't think that'd be very helpful. I'm trying to imagine which religion is standing around waiting for some benevolent calendar dictator to free up a couple new days in the year so they can implement a new traditi…

I'm Italian: every given day most of my fellow nationals are supposed to celebrate this or that saint... the Catholic Church is always more than happy to extend its cultural hegemony by attaching itself to celebrations of any sort, I'd be surprised if other confessions were very different on that front - there's always a scripture or an event that you can use to celebrate a specific day of the year. Even Christmas has not always fallen on the 25th day of the 12th month of the year, after all.

Any calendar reform unfortunately has to deal with this backward-compatibility nightmare with religious tradition, which doomed most previous attempts; hence my parent comment.

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#63

Post by toyg » Sat, Apr 19, 2014, 5:50 AM UTC

notdonspaulding wrote: post #58

toyg wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion and seasonality. 7-days as a unit of measurement is written into unamendable documents hold as holy by all Judaist monotheisms (Jewish, Christian and Islamic). The ciclical experience of seasonal-weather and daylight-lenght changes are also too powerful to deny.

Unrelated, why do you call Islam "judaist"? AFAIK, Islam traces its roots back to Abraham, who was Judah's great-grandfather. So it would seem more appropriate to call it an Abrahamic religion, no?

I'm not a religious scholar by any means (and certainly less versed in Islamic tradition than any Muslim), so you're probably correct.

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#64

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 19, 2014, 5:52 AM UTC

notdonspaulding wrote: post #54

Avshalom wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2015-00-00 2015-00-01 And making dates 0 indexed will make all the C-weenies happy.

Are you saying you'd put the extra days at the start of the first month of the year? Wouldn't that put you back to where the days are not consistently ordered based off their position in the month?

[deleted]

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#65

Post by cyborgx7 » Sat, Apr 19, 2014, 7:48 AM UTC

>There are 365 days in a year (366 on leap years)

Wrong already. I do not understand this obsession to make a year exactly the length of a given number of days. They are both completely unrelated, exept in that they are units of time.

A year should be exactly one time the period of the earth moving around the sun. We just need to agree on a starting point. The day on which that starting point falls would be the last day of that year or the first day of the next (or both). And while I understand the need to group days (not sparate the year) into weeks the concept of month seems completely unnecessary. Just agree on a number of weeks on which pay is given out, rent payed,...

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#66

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Apr 19, 2014, 7:50 AM UTC

ecma wrote: post #33

tunesmith wrote: post #30

With all this talk about universal basic incomes and automation taking away jobs, etc etc, there really might be something to the idea of switching to 73 5-day weeks. I wouldn't be in support of taking away Saturday and Sunday ;) but a 3-day workweek of W-F followed by a weekend of Saturday and Sunday could have real possibilities!

Automation doesn't preclude the need for high levels of human productivity, especially in a knowledge industry based society. Having a 60% productivity (admittedly soft and cultural) limit for the week would be a more significant change than if we were to do 4-1 weeks instead of 5-2 (71.4%). 4-1 seems like it could be a perfectly reasonable way of doing things for a lot of hackers, maybe not for everyone though.

> Having a 60% productivity (admittedly soft and cultural) limit for the week

The culture will quickly adjust productivity levels back up. This isn't something you need to bother worrying about.

The Chinese government mandates an excessive holiday total; during those holidays, businesses and schools close. But the cultural solution is that schools open and businesses work for however many nearby weekend days the official holiday legally consists of (this irritates expats no end; I'm not quite sure why). So if M-W are a holiday one week, expect to work for the preceding weekend and the saturday after.

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#67

Post by Avshalom » Sat, Apr 19, 2014, 7:52 AM UTC

notdonspaulding wrote: post #54

Avshalom wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2015-00-00 2015-00-01 And making dates 0 indexed will make all the C-weenies happy.

Are you saying you'd put the extra days at the start of the first month of the year? Wouldn't that put you back to where the days are not consistently ordered based off their position in the month?

The extra days don't advance the Sun-Sat cycle no matter where you put them. January 1 is essentially defined as Monday (or whatever).

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#68

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Apr 19, 2014, 7:55 AM UTC

cyborgx7 wrote: post #65

>There are 365 days in a year (366 on leap years) Wrong already. I do not understand this obsession to make a year exactly the length of a given number of days. They are both completely unrelated, exept in that they are units of time. A year should be exactly one time the period of the earth moving around the sun. We just need to agree on a starting point. The day on which that starting point falls would be the last…

> Just agree on a number of weeks on which pay is given out, rent payed,...

You can do this now. In particular, pay is quite frequently handled by the week.

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#69

Post by toyg » Sat, Apr 19, 2014, 7:56 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #39

crux wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. In the library, intercalary days are just their own month. So it would just be 2015-14-1.

In other words, there's actually a 14 month that either contains 1 or 2 days, both of which have no weekday associated with them? I don't see how it would make things much easier, especially for timestamps in various date formats and date-input fields.

Why? It's still three numeric digits. If anything, it would be much easier to calculate date validity. In Python:

  acceptable_days = range(1,29)
  if pickedMonth == 14:
     acceptable_days = [1];
     if isLeapYear(year): acceptable_days = [1,2]
     # any future hack will just go here 
  
  if pickedDay not in acceptable_days or pickedMonth > 14: 
     raise InvalidDateException()

Compare this with anything we use today. Which code is simpler?

Re: Posical, the Positivist Calendar for Python

#70

Post by ldng » Sat, Apr 19, 2014, 12:27 PM UTC

jkdearden wrote: post #16

toyg wrote: post #12

It's sad to see that, in what we all consider to be an "enlightened" age for science and rationality, the calendar problem is considered a de-facto taboo, something that will never be changed. It's such an obvious legacy hack, it should be refactored with a modern and proper design, but the API is so popular that breaking it would generate unbearable amounts of stop-energy. I wish we could have a wrapper or something…

It's analogous to the current situation with the metric and imperial unit systems - yes, it would make sense to switch away from imperial units, but it would require many people to fundamentally change how they think about distance, volume, speed, etc. (or time, in the case of the calendar). Although in that case, we sort of have a wrapper, in that many labels list both types of units, but I tend to just look at the…

Just stop teaching imperial units. Europe adopted the Euro and usage of old national currency is fading away. Even the elders around have started to stop converting Euros to old national currencies.

It's hard but not impossible. It's a matter of doing it and stick to it.