4 ms·
> Things we take for granted are hard. Dates are hard, text is hard, graphics are even harder. We stand on the shoulders of giants. More like we stand on piles
by gambler 7y ago
> Things we take for granted are hard. Dates are hard, text is hard, graphics are even harder. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
More like we stand on piles of broken shit. A lot of "hard" things in programming have very little fundamental complexity. They are hard because at some point in time someone made a compromise that no longer is relevant or makes any sense. It is possible to redesign those things to be simple, but modern developers are conditioned to fight this at every step. The idea that the first thing you should try to do when faced with extraordinary complexity is to bypass it is completely alien to people whose daily jobs consist of continuously banging their heads against convoluted frameworks and deficient APIs.
Time handling is a great example. Until you get into general relativity, time itself is extremely simple and uniform. But human representations of time are extremely convoluted, because historically they are based on astronomy. Here is the kicker: 99.99% of all software has nothing to do with astronomy, and yet people chose to inject those complexities in core structures that track time. (For example, Unix timestamps have leap seconds, which is a source of innumerable bugs and ridiculous convolutions in code to prevent those bugs.)
- stnmtn 7y agoAre you arguing for trying to create a new method of tracking time instead of just including moment.js?
- hrktb 7y agoI read parent’s comment as a plea to be simple where it’s allowed. For instance use straight timestamps where there is no need for calendar manipulations. I am sympathic to this argument and I’d also totally join a movement to ignore DST or uncouple years from earth rotation
- m45t3r 7y agoThis post sounds kinda like a satire: "we have problem X, did you try something.js to fix it?"
- rovolo 7y agoIf by 'based on astronomy' you mean 'based on the sun' because the sun is a star, then I agree. But, plenty of software has lots to do with the sun because they have to interact with people, and people like to be synchronized with the sun. If you don't want software to interact with humans, or you only care about duration rather than human datetime, then go ahead and use UT1. However, as long as your interacting with people, you're going to need to fix people first. You should start with these primers if you're going to fix how humans interact with time: - https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish - https://qntm.org/continuous https://qntm.org/continuous
- jblwps 7y ago> Until you get into general relativity, time itself is extremely simple and uniform. Just a little niggle, but I think you meant to say special relativity; special relativity is about the relationship between space and time, whereas general relativity (I believe) is more about gravitation and other things that I definitely don't understand.