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> I once stupidly implemented a "date math" feature I believe this to be one of those rites of passage for any programmer.

• WorldMaker 7y ago
  That and/or "rip out this idiot date math library written by your predecessor and try to use an industry standard library instead". Especially the karma of first one then the other.
  • jandrese 7y ago
    About the only way to keep your sanity is to treat dates in only one of two ways, depending on the context: 1. As a string you don't touch 2. Convert to seconds_since_the_epoch immediately. Convert back only when necessary (when printing to the screen or sending to a SQL query for example). This calc problem is somewhat unique because months and years aren't fixed length and it's probably bad if your program says Feb 1 to March 1 is less than a month, or Jan 1 2000 to Jan 1 2001 is a year and a day. Or if Jan 1 2001 to Jan 1 2002 is a year and a quarter of a day. And then you have to account for those occasional years that are divisible by 4 but are not a leap year. And then you have to account for when someone asks for the difference between September 1 1752 and September 20 1752. Pretty soon you're remembering why rules 1 and 2 exist. It should be noted that calc.exe gets this wrong in many ways.
    • techslave 7y ago
      > Convert to seconds_since_the_epoch immediately. oh my sweet summer child