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I'm amazed to hear anyone doesn't use UTC, I'm not a professional developer and I remember learning, just while teaching myself the basics of PHP & MySQL as a t

by swores 2y ago

I'm amazed to hear anyone doesn't use UTC, I'm not a professional developer and I remember learning, just while teaching myself the basics of PHP & MySQL as a teenager, that it's best to have databases store either UTC or a Unix timestamp (which afaik is essentially the same as using UTC except that it's less easy for most people to read at a glance) and to do the conversion to any local time zone wherever users interact with it.

josephg 2y ago
I have a rule of thumb that software works progressively worse the further you are away from the Bay Area - both geographically and culturally. For example, we use roundabouts (traffic circles) everywhere here in Australia and google maps still gives pretty terrible directions when driving on them. I was shocked the first time I drove on the 101 just how good the spoken directions are - but it makes sense given the actual Google maps engineers drive that road. If the directions were bad there, they would get fixed. I shudder to think how many bugs must show up for people who use right-to-left languages or use non-ascii charsets - especially before Unicode & emoji were popular. I’m ashamed to admit I don’t even know how to test if my software works properly in languages like Arabic. Of course software made in the Bay Area assumes the whole planet uses pacific time. I’m sorry to throw shade, but that’s entirely in character for the area.
- echelon 2y ago
  > I have a rule of thumb that software works progressively worse the further you are away from the Bay Area - both geographically and culturally. It's not just software. EVs struggle with cold and hot climates. They'll get better, of course. But with the engineers living in mostly temperate climates, conditions outside the development environment get less upfront attention.
oasisbob 2y ago
The two worst offenders I can think of with regards to using local time were Rackspace, and Southwest Airlines. Not in the Bay Area, but every other west-coast company I've been involved with is pretty militant about using UTC, typically due battle wounds from communication challenges or time-related bugs. I would be very curious to hear which other major companies are deploying systems on local time in 2024.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Google runs on Google Standard Time which is UTC+8 aka US west coast.
  - Timwi 2y ago
    No, it's UTC–8.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      Yes, you're right. Thanks.
Izkata 2y ago
> either UTC or a Unix timestamp (which afaik is essentially the same as using UTC except that it's less easy for most people to read at a glance) UTC has leap seconds, unix timestamp doesn't. It's defined to have 86400 seconds per day, so there's no place to put a leap second. Instead, it either duplicates a timestamp or does "leap smearing" - slightly changing the duration of a second around where the leap second is.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- AnotherGoodName 2y ago
  They both skip over leap seconds unlike TAI time, they just handle the leap second subtly differently. He’s right to say it’s essentially the same.
mypalmike 2y ago
The most amazing of these exceptions is Microsoft Windows 11, which still uses local time on the hardware clock, a legacy of decisions made over 40 years ago. Raymond Chen defended this practice (20 years ago) https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040902-00/?p=37983 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040902-00/?p=37... . It's possible to make it use UTC, but it requires registry hacking.

by swores 2y ago

josephg 2y ago

I have a rule of thumb that software works progressively worse the further you are away from the Bay Area - both geographically and culturally. For example, we use roundabouts (traffic circles) everywhere here in Australia and google maps still gives pretty terrible directions when driving on them. I was shocked the first time I drove on the 101 just how good the spoken directions are - but it makes sense given the actual Google maps engineers drive that road. If the directions were bad there, they would get fixed. I shudder to think how many bugs must show up for people who use right-to-left languages or use non-ascii charsets - especially before Unicode & emoji were popular. I’m ashamed to admit I don’t even know how to test if my software works properly in languages like Arabic. Of course software made in the Bay Area assumes the whole planet uses pacific time. I’m sorry to throw shade, but that’s entirely in character for the area.

echelon 2y ago
> I have a rule of thumb that software works progressively worse the further you are away from the Bay Area - both geographically and culturally. It's not just software. EVs struggle with cold and hot climates. They'll get better, of course. But with the engineers living in mostly temperate climates, conditions outside the development environment get less upfront attention.

oasisbob 2y ago

The two worst offenders I can think of with regards to using local time were Rackspace, and Southwest Airlines. Not in the Bay Area, but every other west-coast company I've been involved with is pretty militant about using UTC, typically due battle wounds from communication challenges or time-related bugs. I would be very curious to hear which other major companies are deploying systems on local time in 2024.

fragmede 2y ago
Google runs on Google Standard Time which is UTC+8 aka US west coast.
- Timwi 2y ago
  No, it's UTC–8.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Yes, you're right. Thanks.

Izkata 2y ago

> either UTC or a Unix timestamp (which afaik is essentially the same as using UTC except that it's less easy for most people to read at a glance) UTC has leap seconds, unix timestamp doesn't. It's defined to have 86400 seconds per day, so there's no place to put a leap second. Instead, it either duplicates a timestamp or does "leap smearing" - slightly changing the duration of a second around where the leap second is.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
AnotherGoodName 2y ago
They both skip over leap seconds unlike TAI time, they just handle the leap second subtly differently. He’s right to say it’s essentially the same.

mypalmike 2y ago

The most amazing of these exceptions is Microsoft Windows 11, which still uses local time on the hardware clock, a legacy of decisions made over 40 years ago. Raymond Chen defended this practice (20 years ago) https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040902-00/?p=37983 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040902-00/?p=37... . It's possible to make it use UTC, but it requires registry hacking.