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Timezone Bullshit

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Re: Timezone Bullshit

#121

Post by ljm »

qwertox wrote: post #85
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The infuriating thing is that our solution to this is to change the clock instead of just changing our schedules. It's completely ridiculous.

We shouldn't even adjust our schedules. We should just accept the fact that it is going to be dark at different times. Then again, this would be an issue for road workers (those who repair highways or other roads) and maybe trash collection services. So it begins... Horrible.

Technically DST _is_ accepting that it's going to be dark at different times, and therefore the completely man-made thing that is a clock can be changed a bit to reflect that.

A perfectly human solution really: work around the shift in daylight hours across the year by fiddling with the clocks. The whole thing with schedules and timetables is a self inflicted problem in a post-industrial society, sure, but workarounds are never really meant to be more than a bandaid.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#122

Post by KineticLensman »

Lvl999Noob wrote: post #43
jwalton wrote: post #27

Another reason not to use EST/EDT is that they are overspecifying the time zone in most cases. If you ask for output in EDT, but the date is in December (which is not part of daylight savings time) then should the date output be UTC-4 or UTC-5? Technically you asked for EDT. Using EST as a shortcut isn’t a good idea, either - most software will “know what you mean” and use EST or EDT appropriately... except, both The…

On the topic of DST... can you explain why some countries use DST? Anytime I look for the reasoning of it, it says that DST helps "make better use of daytime" but how? The earth isn't gonna say "Damn! These people changed their clocks. I better change by rotation and give them more sun time." Whether you have DST or not, you still have the same amount of time with sunlight in a day.

> Whether you have DST or not, you still have the same amount of time with sunlight in a day

Yes, but you can better align the available light with things like commutes and school hours - so that people commute in light instead of the dark, for example.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#123

Post by de_Selby »

outadoc wrote: post #94
de_Selby wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the moral is that server side should always be in UTC.

Not true. Say you want to save an event that you know will happen on the 14th of July at 15:00 Paris time, in the year 2025. Current time zone rules tells you this will be at 13:00 UTC. Well, if France decides to abolish DST and stick to standard time before then, you'll be wrong.

For that use case definitely, though a law change is a bit of an edge case.

For stamping times like in a log though UTC should always be used server side.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#124

Post by GoblinSlayer »

XorNot wrote: post #58
Lvl999Noob wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the topic of DST... can you explain why some countries use DST? Anytime I look for the reasoning of it, it says that DST helps "make better use of daytime" but how? The earth isn't gonna say "Damn! These people changed their clocks. I better change by rotation and give them more sun time." Whether you have DST or not, you still have the same amount of time with sunlight in a day.

For the same reason that work from home turns out to be viable for a huge number of people, and the main reason office's are as big as they are is because middle managers don't believe work happens if they don't watch someone sit in an office chair. There's no possible way businesses are going to adjust their hours twice yearly to let employees get more sunshine, but DST does that effectively by ensuring official tim…

What is the point of sunshine if you sit in a box all day? You get equally zero amount of it during summer as well as winter.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#125

Post by SamBam »

remram wrote: post #119
Lvl999Noob wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it was easier in the times before the internet. Now a consistent timeline should be far more convenient than not having to change your habits by a little bit. Edit: If changing schedule is normalized, then it would be just as convenient as changing the clock. In countries without DST, if someone started using DST instead of changing their own schedule, it would be just as difficult.

Your argument sounds very similar to the "let's abolish timezones" argument so let me post this again: https://qntm.org/abolish Changing your schedule works for you and your boss, but does not let people in other parts of the world know when they can reach you. Officially shifting something is necessary, and then you might as well have timezones.

I find it insane that there are otherwise-smart people in the world that want to abolish time zones. For example, this NY Times article. [1]

In includes the most bizarre history:

> A century and a half ago, time zones didn’t exist. They were a consequence of the invention of railroads.

... and goes on to describe that it's suddenly so confusing and laughable that when it was 7:00 in New York, it would now be 8:00 in Chicago and 5:00 in San Francisco.

But what on Earth did the writer think the time was in San Francisco before there were time zones?

Before there were time zones, everyone synchronized to local noon. The result was much more fine-grained "time zones." What time zones did was to actually flatten those difference, leading to fewer time zones, because now suddenly the time in Maine was the same as the time in Michigan, despite being at completely different longitudes.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/sunday/time-to-du...

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#126

Post by GoblinSlayer »

ghaff wrote: post #108
ceilingcorner wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think anyone other than programmers thinks DST is much of an inconvenience. The clock changes twice a year, big deal. That’s infinitely less complicated than asking your boss if you can start earlier, which means the store at the subway station will need to be open an hour earlier (since its business comes from commuters), which means restaurants will need to be open earlier to address the lunch crowd, which…

In all fairness, people like parents with young children, pets, etc. find time changes disruptive. That said, there are good reasons to shift schedules in mid latitudes and daylight saving time is a good way to do that if you don't want 4am sunrises in the summer or heading out in the pitch black in the winter. The reality is that if you don't do daylight savings, you're not going to have a collective switch in sched…

What's the problem with 4am sunrises?

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#127

Post by FabHK »

Can I just say how grateful I am for good date/time/timezone libraries? Ok, this here library may not be a very good example - but imagine having to write and maintain all that stuff by yourself...

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#128

Post by hyperpape »

bob1029 wrote: post #5

The only situation where our datetime instances deal with timezones is on a one way trip to a user's display, document or email. If you are playing around with parsing timezone strings, you are probably making a huge mistake unless you are parsing someone else's trash data. I feel the standard interchange format for datetimes really should be 64 bit Unix timestamps. These are trivial to store in any database as a nat…

Other commenters are right, one article that lays out the case that there are plenty of times what you say isn't right: https://zachholman.com/talk/utc-is-enough-for-everyone-right.

Use UTC everywhere, then display in the user's timezone is a perfectly valid pattern...for specific use cases. Those use cases are very common, but many people over generalize, and assume that it can handle all cases.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#129

Post by GoblinSlayer »

remram wrote: post #119
Lvl999Noob wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it was easier in the times before the internet. Now a consistent timeline should be far more convenient than not having to change your habits by a little bit. Edit: If changing schedule is normalized, then it would be just as convenient as changing the clock. In countries without DST, if someone started using DST instead of changing their own schedule, it would be just as difficult.

Your argument sounds very similar to the "let's abolish timezones" argument so let me post this again: https://qntm.org/abolish Changing your schedule works for you and your boss, but does not let people in other parts of the world know when they can reach you. Officially shifting something is necessary, and then you might as well have timezones.

People in other parts of the world can reach me at any time by email, during the work hours of the email server.

Re: Timezone Bullshit

#130

Post by ghaff »

ljm wrote: post #121
qwertox wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't even adjust our schedules. We should just accept the fact that it is going to be dark at different times. Then again, this would be an issue for road workers (those who repair highways or other roads) and maybe trash collection services. So it begins... Horrible.

Technically DST _is_ accepting that it's going to be dark at different times, and therefore the completely man-made thing that is a clock can be changed a bit to reflect that. A perfectly human solution really: work around the shift in daylight hours across the year by fiddling with the clocks. The whole thing with schedules and timetables is a self inflicted problem in a post-industrial society, sure, but workaround…

The problem is that you need to "fiddle with the clocks" in a coordinated way. Schools can't shift around starting times asynchronously with the many businesses where parents work for example.
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