3 ms·

I don't like to throw shade on my own profession, but I know some number of code bases that will need to be furiously updated if DST goes away. I wonder what's

I don't like to throw shade on my own profession, but I know some number of code bases that will need to be furiously updated if DST goes away. I wonder what's going on deep in some 'core infrastructure' code. Tracking time zones all over the world is hard, and a lot of code that does it was written decades ago. I wouldn't eagerly sign up to review it all. I'd much rather stick with DST than send some poor devs down that path.

mnw21cam 5y ago
If there's an example of a thing that you shouldn't try to do yourself other than crypto, it's timezones. The timezone database is there, and it is updated regularly by very dedicated and intelligent people. There's no excuse for not using it.
- nineplay 5y ago
  Wikipedia suggests it's been there since 86. There is a whole lot of code written before 86 and I'm suspecting a whole lot of it doesn't get regularly refactored. I can tell you from experience that there's financial code with some dicey hard coding. I haven't seen it in a long time so hopefully some happy Cobol programmer jumped and used the money to retire early.
throw0101a 5y ago
Some of us were around for the last set of changes: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005#Change_to_daylight_saving_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005#Chan... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States#2005%E2%80%932009:_Second_extension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_Un... Much patching / updating of tzdata and rebooting. I think that effort led to a bunch of changes that make for easier updates going forward. Until that point there wasn't really that much churn in things over the past few decades, so people became a little more bit complacent when it came to TZ code.
philsnow 5y ago
Shouldn't that code just do whatever tzdata says, and when tzdata says "don't change for DST", it just doesn't?

mnw21cam 5y ago

If there's an example of a thing that you shouldn't try to do yourself other than crypto, it's timezones. The timezone database is there, and it is updated regularly by very dedicated and intelligent people. There's no excuse for not using it.

nineplay 5y ago
Wikipedia suggests it's been there since 86. There is a whole lot of code written before 86 and I'm suspecting a whole lot of it doesn't get regularly refactored. I can tell you from experience that there's financial code with some dicey hard coding. I haven't seen it in a long time so hopefully some happy Cobol programmer jumped and used the money to retire early.

throw0101a 5y ago

Some of us were around for the last set of changes: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005#Change_to_daylight_saving_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005#Chan... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States#2005%E2%80%932009:_Second_extension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_Un... Much patching / updating of tzdata and rebooting. I think that effort led to a bunch of changes that make for easier updates going forward. Until that point there wasn't really that much churn in things over the past few decades, so people became a little more bit complacent when it came to TZ code.

philsnow 5y ago

Shouldn't that code just do whatever tzdata says, and when tzdata says "don't change for DST", it just doesn't?