3 ms·

Dealing with time on Go, whether simply unmarshalling string representations of time or handling timezone/locale converstions, is so incredibly convenient. Gone

Dealing with time on Go, whether simply unmarshalling string representations of time or handling timezone/locale converstions, is so incredibly convenient. Gone are the days when I'd have to remember the difference between "%MM", "%mm", and "%m". I have gotten incredibly spoiled in this regard, and it's incredibly painful now to deal with time in Python or (even worse) Javascript[0]. This isn't even getting at the synchronization/timing features, which Go provides amazing support for as well. [0] My jaw hit the floor when I saw how difficult it is to get the name of a month from a Date object in Javascript: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1643320/get-month-name-from-date https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1643320/get-month-name-f...

enneff 13y ago
Interestingly, the Parse and Format functions were inspired by COBOL's "picture statements".
redbad 13y ago
Agreed. In particular, I found the "reference value" approach that Go uses for time parsing incredibly quirky, but ultimately intuitive and unambiguous. http://golang.org/pkg/time/#Parse http://golang.org/pkg/time/#Parse
awj 13y ago
Using a reference time to describe the layout is pretty brilliant. Out of curiosity, how would it handle non-time "noise" data that happened to be embedded in the string? Expecting "it'll throw an error, also why would you do that" as the answer, but just curious.
- aaronblohowiak 13y ago
  You can trivially check on play.golang.org
grosskur 13y ago
"it's incredibly painful now to deal with time in Python" I suggest looking into Arrow: http://crsmithdev.com/arrow/ http://crsmithdev.com/arrow/ My experience is that Arrow fixes date/time handling for Python the same way Requests fixes HTTP handling.
ivanca 13y ago
In (modern ES5) JavaScript is easy enough: new Date("10/11/2014").toLocaleString("en-us", { month: "long" });
shultays 13y ago
Are you talking about some other answer from top one? The one that takes index of current month and prints it? That looks pretty straight forward to me.
- chimeracoder 13y ago
  Explicitly and manually creating a (mutable!) array of strings for this purpose is rather ridiculous. Contrast with the equivalent code in Go: http://play.golang.org/p/lpYeBYGEv5 http://play.golang.org/p/lpYeBYGEv5 It's especially ridiculous in Javascript because the internal functions make use of it (try calling (new Date()).toString()), but they don't give direct access to it. A well-designed stdlib should handle all of these basic things without requiring the programmer to do any extra work. It's especially important when talking about time, because there are so many wacky edge cases that no programmer is ever going to be able to predict all of them if they have to roll it themselves.
rquirk 13y ago
It was one of the things I hated about Go! I am entirely comfortable with the POSIX-style %Y, %m, etc. formatting and having to learn Go's silly way to do it annoyed me no end. The documentation should be much more explicit about what the "reference time" thing means for someone used to strftime. http://golang.org/pkg/time/#Time.Format http://golang.org/pkg/time/#Time.Format
- rwj 13y ago
  It took me an unreasonably long time to figure out how that time parsing works. The explanation is not particularly clear. That said, once you understand the format, it is very easy to use.
- chimeracoder 13y ago
  > For more information about the formats and the definition of the reference time, see the documentation for ANSIC and the other constants defined by this package. I find the information at http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants very explanatory. What do you think is unclear about the documentation?
  - rquirk 13y ago
    I just didn't "get it" as I had no idea what it meant by a reference time. Normally a time is formatted like %Y-%m-%d and so on, these examples look nothing like that so I had no idea that 2006 is how they spell %Y, 01 is %m, 02 is %d, etc. If you have grown up with strptime and friends, the Go version and documentation makes literally no sense. Then it suddenly clicks ("ah! they do that?!") and it is perfectly obvious.

enneff 13y ago

Interestingly, the Parse and Format functions were inspired by COBOL's "picture statements".

redbad 13y ago

Agreed. In particular, I found the "reference value" approach that Go uses for time parsing incredibly quirky, but ultimately intuitive and unambiguous. http://golang.org/pkg/time/#Parse http://golang.org/pkg/time/#Parse

awj 13y ago

Using a reference time to describe the layout is pretty brilliant. Out of curiosity, how would it handle non-time "noise" data that happened to be embedded in the string? Expecting "it'll throw an error, also why would you do that" as the answer, but just curious.

aaronblohowiak 13y ago
You can trivially check on play.golang.org

grosskur 13y ago

"it's incredibly painful now to deal with time in Python" I suggest looking into Arrow: http://crsmithdev.com/arrow/ http://crsmithdev.com/arrow/ My experience is that Arrow fixes date/time handling for Python the same way Requests fixes HTTP handling.

ivanca 13y ago

In (modern ES5) JavaScript is easy enough: new Date("10/11/2014").toLocaleString("en-us", { month: "long" });

shultays 13y ago

Are you talking about some other answer from top one? The one that takes index of current month and prints it? That looks pretty straight forward to me.

chimeracoder 13y ago
Explicitly and manually creating a (mutable!) array of strings for this purpose is rather ridiculous. Contrast with the equivalent code in Go: http://play.golang.org/p/lpYeBYGEv5 http://play.golang.org/p/lpYeBYGEv5 It's especially ridiculous in Javascript because the internal functions make use of it (try calling (new Date()).toString()), but they don't give direct access to it. A well-designed stdlib should handle all of these basic things without requiring the programmer to do any extra work. It's especially important when talking about time, because there are so many wacky edge cases that no programmer is ever going to be able to predict all of them if they have to roll it themselves.

rquirk 13y ago

It was one of the things I hated about Go! I am entirely comfortable with the POSIX-style %Y, %m, etc. formatting and having to learn Go's silly way to do it annoyed me no end. The documentation should be much more explicit about what the "reference time" thing means for someone used to strftime. http://golang.org/pkg/time/#Time.Format http://golang.org/pkg/time/#Time.Format

rwj 13y ago
It took me an unreasonably long time to figure out how that time parsing works. The explanation is not particularly clear. That said, once you understand the format, it is very easy to use.
chimeracoder 13y ago
> For more information about the formats and the definition of the reference time, see the documentation for ANSIC and the other constants defined by this package. I find the information at http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants very explanatory. What do you think is unclear about the documentation?
- rquirk 13y ago
  I just didn't "get it" as I had no idea what it meant by a reference time. Normally a time is formatted like %Y-%m-%d and so on, these examples look nothing like that so I had no idea that 2006 is how they spell %Y, 01 is %m, 02 is %d, etc. If you have grown up with strptime and friends, the Go version and documentation makes literally no sense. Then it suddenly clicks ("ah! they do that?!") and it is perfectly obvious.