4 ms·
I disagree, timezones give you some pretty strong hints. I know for a fact that 1pm in India is in the middle of the day. I don't have to do a translation and r
by phailhaus 5y ago
I disagree, timezones give you some pretty strong hints. I know for a fact that 1pm in India is in the middle of the day. I don't have to do a translation and realize "wait, that's actually equivalent to my 10:30pm". Those two are diametrically opposite.
And see what I just did there, that translation? It's timezones all over again! We have timezones because we realized that no matter what we do, we're going to want to convert back into a time that we understand. It's easier for everyone to have a common understanding of 1pm, rather than maintaining mental lookup tables of "1pm in NYC is mid-dayish" vs "1pm in India is midnight-ish". That's not maintainable.
- bluGill 5y ago1pm in India doesn't give you any useful information about when the local culture sets work hour. I work with people in India, and often get IMs from them and when I look at their time I wonder why they are still working at 1am. Some off the teams over there need to work with Americans enough that they have adjusted their work hours to meet ours, while others have not. Thus I need to ask each team what a reasonable time for a meeting is no matter what.
- phailhaus 5y agoNow you're fixated on work etiquette! The advantage of timezones is that we have a common vocabulary to talk about periods of the day. It's not about saying "aha! Everyone is free at 1pm!", it's about being able to agree on "1pm is just after noon." If you take that away, we literally have no common understanding of time. "It's 3am for me." When is that? Is that late? Is that early? Without timezones, I have absolutely no clue without location information. Check this out for a thorough breakdown: https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish