3 ms·
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
by 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 agoBut 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 agoSurely "24" introduces a special case to the hours field which you have to account for?