5 ms·

Non-programmers don't care about this nearly as much as we do. The prevailing attitude is "Ok sure there are edge cases, but so what? My use case is simple". A

Non-programmers don't care about this nearly as much as we do. The prevailing attitude is "Ok sure there are edge cases, but so what? My use case is simple". And after thinking about it a lot more, I think this attitude is actually more sensible than mine used to be. Why do we as programmers keep trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? Timezones are a political construct, not a mathematical one. We should address edge cases by deferring to people as much as possible. Oh, you find it annoying to enter an offset? Don't worry about it, it's optional! Your dentist will expect you for your cleaning at 8:00am +/- 5 hours. If we keep smoothing over the rough edges for our users, the problem will only get worse. Better to make timezones as painful as possible for as many users as possible. They'll eventually vote for something less obnoxious.

cudder 3y ago
As much as I would love this too from a programmer's perspective, reading [1] convinced me that time zones are a necessary evil we just kinda have to deal with. They could be improved by a lot, though. First thing I'd do is get rid of DST everywhere. [1]: https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish
- FullyFunctional 3y ago
  Thanks for the reference. I have a number of issues with that essay, but fundamentally, once we have people on Mars we'll have exactly this issue. There's no easy way around it and we'll always have to negotiate hours that work for both parties (which is what I basically have to do with my family who are about 90º phase shifted from me).
naniwaduni 3y ago
> We should address edge cases by deferring to people as much as possible. Oh, you find it annoying to enter an offset? Don't worry about it, it's optional! Your dentist will expect you for your cleaning at 8:00am +/- 5 hours. > If we keep smoothing over the rough edges for our users, the problem will only get worse. Better to make timezones as painful as possible for as many users as possible. They'll eventually vote for something less obnoxious. This is gonna go over great with the people making purchasing decisions.

cudder 3y ago

As much as I would love this too from a programmer's perspective, reading [1] convinced me that time zones are a necessary evil we just kinda have to deal with. They could be improved by a lot, though. First thing I'd do is get rid of DST everywhere. [1]: https://qntm.org/abolish https://qntm.org/abolish

FullyFunctional 3y ago
Thanks for the reference. I have a number of issues with that essay, but fundamentally, once we have people on Mars we'll have exactly this issue. There's no easy way around it and we'll always have to negotiate hours that work for both parties (which is what I basically have to do with my family who are about 90º phase shifted from me).

naniwaduni 3y ago

> We should address edge cases by deferring to people as much as possible. Oh, you find it annoying to enter an offset? Don't worry about it, it's optional! Your dentist will expect you for your cleaning at 8:00am +/- 5 hours. > If we keep smoothing over the rough edges for our users, the problem will only get worse. Better to make timezones as painful as possible for as many users as possible. They'll eventually vote for something less obnoxious. This is gonna go over great with the people making purchasing decisions.