4 ms·

> But this editorial is pretty light on actually supporting that. Why would it need to? This smacks of not having tried to understand the many, varied, and cha

by jack9 10y ago

> But this editorial is pretty light on actually supporting that. Why would it need to? This smacks of not having tried to understand the many, varied, and changing rules trying to tie locality to time. One inch into US Arizona's boundaries and you're off by an hour, if you are at one point in the calendar vs another. How many man hours have gone into maintaining this system, and continue to?

emodendroket 10y ago
Yes, it's arbitrary, but we're on a continuum somewhere between every couple feet the time changes a few minutes and no adjustment at all and it feels to me like we're close to a happy medium.
- jack9 10y ago
  It's not quite that simple. Timezones change (less often than postal codes, but across the world, it's still a bunch of maintenance changes). Getting rid of timezones would be simpler and reduce a monumental number of bugs (as well as code and potential problems). See the Russian changes! https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/ https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    OK, sure, but so what? The fact that it takes effort to maintain doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.
  - roel_v 10y ago
    Only a few people have to maintain the time zone system, and only a few people (those writing the software that everybody else uses) have to understand the minutiae. The alternative is that everybody has to understand, which will invariably cause many mistakes. I mean, when someone schedules an across-timezones meeting they use software anyway; and who really cares about that one time 2 decades ago when some small region switched timezones or whatever? (yes, I'm painfully aware that there are changes to timezones across the world pretty much every month; what I'm saying is how often does anyone really care about the historical changes, in contexts where the hour or 30 minutes really matters?)
    - epmatsw 10y ago
      Medical software certainly does. I imagine financial software as well.
      - roel_v 10y ago
        Sure, but there it's on the programmer. Which is exactly what I mean - it's better to shift the onus to the few than having everybody needing to care about it.

by jack9 10y ago

emodendroket 10y ago

Yes, it's arbitrary, but we're on a continuum somewhere between every couple feet the time changes a few minutes and no adjustment at all and it feels to me like we're close to a happy medium.

jack9 10y ago
It's not quite that simple. Timezones change (less often than postal codes, but across the world, it's still a bunch of maintenance changes). Getting rid of timezones would be simpler and reduce a monumental number of bugs (as well as code and potential problems). See the Russian changes! https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/ https://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/
- emodendroket 10y ago
  OK, sure, but so what? The fact that it takes effort to maintain doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.
- roel_v 10y ago
  Only a few people have to maintain the time zone system, and only a few people (those writing the software that everybody else uses) have to understand the minutiae. The alternative is that everybody has to understand, which will invariably cause many mistakes. I mean, when someone schedules an across-timezones meeting they use software anyway; and who really cares about that one time 2 decades ago when some small region switched timezones or whatever? (yes, I'm painfully aware that there are changes to timezones across the world pretty much every month; what I'm saying is how often does anyone really care about the historical changes, in contexts where the hour or 30 minutes really matters?)
  - epmatsw 10y ago
    Medical software certainly does. I imagine financial software as well.
    - roel_v 10y ago
      Sure, but there it's on the programmer. Which is exactly what I mean - it's better to shift the onus to the few than having everybody needing to care about it.