Re:Time to Dump Time Zones
by emodendroket on Sunday November 06, 2016 @06:27PM
(#12887723)
Yes, it's arbitrary, but we're on a continuum somewhere between every couple feet the time changes a few minutes and no adjustment at all and it feels to me like we're close to a happy medium.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
It's not quite that simple. Timezones change (less often than postal codes, but across the world, it's still a bunch of maintenance changes). Getting rid of timezones would be simpler and reduce a monumental number of bugs (as well as code and potential problems). See the Russian changes!
Only a few people have to maintain the time zone system, and only a few people (those writing the software that everybody else uses) have to understand the minutiae. The alternative is that everybody has to understand, which will invariably cause many mistakes.
I mean, when someone schedules an across-timezones meeting they use software anyway; and who really cares about that one time 2 decades ago when some small region switched timezones or whatever? (yes, I'm painfully aware that there are changes to timezones across the world pretty much every month; what I'm saying is how often does anyone really care about the historical changes, in contexts where the hour or 30 minutes really matters?)
Medical software certainly does. I imagine financial software as well.
Sure, but there it's on the programmer. Which is exactly what I mean - it's better to shift the onus to the few than having everybody needing to care about it.
Re:Time to Dump Time Zones
by emodendroket on Sunday November 06, 2016 @06:34PM
(#12887758)
OK, sure, but so what? The fact that it takes effort to maintain doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.