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... which means ISO 8601 cannot deal with timezones but only UTC offsets - which are temptingly useful but fundamentally broken. Including fixed UTC offsets wa
by crote 3y ago
... which means ISO 8601 cannot deal with timezones but only UTC offsets - which are temptingly useful but fundamentally broken.
Including fixed UTC offsets was a massive mistake and it should have never happened. Anything except named timezones is useless.
- lxgr 3y agoI personally find UTC offsets pretty useful for (free-form) meeting scheduling, i.e. "see you at 15:00 (UTC+2)" beats "see you at 15:00 (CET)". It makes quick mental math to figure out what that is in my current timezone so much easier. Otherwise, I'm also always left wondering whether they really meant CET or actually CEST, calculating what the current offset of CET is, double-checking whether there's some other CET that I might be confusing things with (China Eastern Standard Time?) etc.
- michael1999 3y agoOffsets are just fine for timestamps, and other historical data. And much simpler than having to maintain history of TZ data, and trusting that all your collaborators are using the same TZ db. It is only scheduling future events where they fall down. Calendars and scheduling are demanding applications.