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> How do you represent a time which lies well in the future, like "January 1, 2030, midnight GMT" in that format? Problem is that "January 1, 2030, midnight GM
by zajio1am 5y ago
> How do you represent a time which lies well in the future, like "January 1, 2030, midnight GMT" in that format?
Problem is that "January 1, 2030, midnight GMT" is not time moment itself, it is just human label for some time moment. Time is a physical quantity measurered in seconds. We do not know which time will be represented by label "January 1, 2030, midnight GMT" in the future, because that might change. That is why such representation it is unusable as a timestamp.
- duskwuff 5y agoAnd that's ridiculous. Outside of special cases like changes to DST rules, people expect to be able to perform arithmetic on dates and get results which don't vary over time, no more than other physical measurements and operations change over time.
- nine_k 5y agoAs long as you can afford a half-minute precision for an event 8.5 years ahead, you still can assume that simple datetime arithmetic works. This is ignoring the complexity of the reality. If you need a better precision, you store your date as a label saying "local midnight of January 1st 2030", and adjust its mapping to a particular number of seconds since epoch as time passes, or maybe do something even more complex. This is adjusting to the complexity of the reality. The third way, mandating the reality to not be complex, is not available.
- simondotau 5y agoIt's not ridiculous. One is a measurement of linear time, the other is a series of context-sensitive human labels tied to planetary movements. Conceptually they are not the same thing, even though we try very hard to make them the same.