3 ms·

This creates a coordination problem. For example, your workplace adopts summer hours and now you have to get to work an hour earlier, but you kids' daycare has

This creates a coordination problem. For example, your workplace adopts summer hours and now you have to get to work an hour earlier, but you kids' daycare hasn't. Or, the bakery wants to deliver pastries to the cafe an hour earlier, but the cafe workers haven't shown up yet. DST perfectly solves this problem -- everyone switches on the same day. This makes life easier for the entire population, and causes slight headaches for computer programmers.

kstrauser 5y ago
Forgive me, but this reads like "we're avoiding a giant coordination problem by implementing a giant coordination problem". It would be just as easy to remind everyone that winter hours start on X date as to remind them to change their clocks on X date.
- asoneth 5y ago
  I'd be fine with either DST or summer/winter hours but the latter is a significatnly harder coordination problem. Not all businesses would change you'd end up having to keep track of which things have shifted and which things have not and all the downstream implications of that. Compare that to the five minutes a year I spend setting the handful of non-internet-connected clocks in my house. (And of course if you legally mandated that everyone had to shift their hours twice a year at the exact same time then you just invented DST with extra steps.)
  - logfromblammo 5y ago
    Seasonal business hours can be posted as any time of day in UTC. DST can only adjust by exactly 1 hour.
    - asoneth 5y ago
      Seasonal hours are indeed more expressive than DST. I love when times are indexed in terms of "sunrise" and/or "sunset" such as the parks near me. But it doesn't mean that it is simpler for regular people to implement in their lives. If every shop, school, and office had seasonal hours that changed at different times of year (even if they were posted in UTC) then trying to coordinate errands would become a lot more complex. This week I have time to pick Timmy up from school and swing by the post office before it closes, next week school shifts later so I can't, but the week after that the post office implements their shift and I can again.
dqv 5y ago
Many businesses already have differing winter/summer hours under the current regime. That is, they change their hours in winter and summer. And often those hours don’t change in any consistent way. They do just fine despite the coordination problem you bring up. Business hours and human hours change all the time anyway. You have to check in instead of assume. The times that things happen are not and have never been static.

kstrauser 5y ago

Forgive me, but this reads like "we're avoiding a giant coordination problem by implementing a giant coordination problem". It would be just as easy to remind everyone that winter hours start on X date as to remind them to change their clocks on X date.

asoneth 5y ago
I'd be fine with either DST or summer/winter hours but the latter is a significatnly harder coordination problem. Not all businesses would change you'd end up having to keep track of which things have shifted and which things have not and all the downstream implications of that. Compare that to the five minutes a year I spend setting the handful of non-internet-connected clocks in my house. (And of course if you legally mandated that everyone had to shift their hours twice a year at the exact same time then you just invented DST with extra steps.)
- logfromblammo 5y ago
  Seasonal business hours can be posted as any time of day in UTC. DST can only adjust by exactly 1 hour.
  - asoneth 5y ago
    Seasonal hours are indeed more expressive than DST. I love when times are indexed in terms of "sunrise" and/or "sunset" such as the parks near me. But it doesn't mean that it is simpler for regular people to implement in their lives. If every shop, school, and office had seasonal hours that changed at different times of year (even if they were posted in UTC) then trying to coordinate errands would become a lot more complex. This week I have time to pick Timmy up from school and swing by the post office before it closes, next week school shifts later so I can't, but the week after that the post office implements their shift and I can again.

dqv 5y ago

Many businesses already have differing winter/summer hours under the current regime. That is, they change their hours in winter and summer. And often those hours don’t change in any consistent way. They do just fine despite the coordination problem you bring up. Business hours and human hours change all the time anyway. You have to check in instead of assume. The times that things happen are not and have never been static.