4 ms·

It bothers me that a minute is not always 60 seconds. For leap seconds why did we choose 23:59:60 instead of 24:00:00? If we had went with the latter we also so

by pg_bot 11y ago

It bothers me that a minute is not always 60 seconds. For leap seconds why did we choose 23:59:60 instead of 24:00:00? If we had went with the latter we also solve the daylight savings time problem. A day would last until 22:59:59 or 24:59:59 depending on the time of year. It seems like a lot of things would be simpler that way. Does anyone have a better understanding of why things ended up this way?

deathanatos 11y ago
> It bothers me that a minute is not always 60 seconds. For leap seconds why did we choose 23:59:60 instead of 24:00:00? But how does this solve the problem? Sure, 23:59 is now 60 seconds long, but the minute 24:00 is only 1 second long.
- pg_bot 11y ago
  It's about consistency. 23:59:60 is introducing a special case to the seconds field which you have to account for. 24:00:00 only adds a second to the day where it naturally should go. I don't redefine what a minute is, a minute is always 60 seconds. You are confusing two separate ideas, displaying a time and finding the difference between two times. Lexically you wouldn't say that minute is 1 second long, you would say that the day ends on the first second of the last new minute.
  - paulddraper 11y ago
    But then you have a second that doesn't belong to a minute.
    - pg_bot 11y ago
      ...so what that doesn't matter? Imagine you are an evil genius who has built a rocket to extend earth's orbit by an hour each day. How would you now represent time for a day once we live in that new orbit? Most people would just add an hour so the days end at 24:59:59. What if the rocket didn't extend time by an hour but instead by 59 minutes and 59 seconds. What would you do then? We can repeat this until we get down to one second. Wouldn't it make sense to end up at 24:00:00 instead of 23:59:60 in that situation?
  - Scarblac 11y ago
    Surely "24" introduces a special case to the hours field which you have to account for?

by pg_bot 11y ago

deathanatos 11y ago

> It bothers me that a minute is not always 60 seconds. For leap seconds why did we choose 23:59:60 instead of 24:00:00? But how does this solve the problem? Sure, 23:59 is now 60 seconds long, but the minute 24:00 is only 1 second long.

pg_bot 11y ago
It's about consistency. 23:59:60 is introducing a special case to the seconds field which you have to account for. 24:00:00 only adds a second to the day where it naturally should go. I don't redefine what a minute is, a minute is always 60 seconds. You are confusing two separate ideas, displaying a time and finding the difference between two times. Lexically you wouldn't say that minute is 1 second long, you would say that the day ends on the first second of the last new minute.
- paulddraper 11y ago
  But then you have a second that doesn't belong to a minute.
  - pg_bot 11y ago
    ...so what that doesn't matter? Imagine you are an evil genius who has built a rocket to extend earth's orbit by an hour each day. How would you now represent time for a day once we live in that new orbit? Most people would just add an hour so the days end at 24:59:59. What if the rocket didn't extend time by an hour but instead by 59 minutes and 59 seconds. What would you do then? We can repeat this until we get down to one second. Wouldn't it make sense to end up at 24:00:00 instead of 23:59:60 in that situation?
- Scarblac 11y ago
  Surely "24" introduces a special case to the hours field which you have to account for?