thread

If you've never written time code, you have no idea how fucked up time code is to write.

You know the common expression "it's not rocket science"?

Time code is fucking rocket science. Grownup programmers *never* write that shit by hand, they *always* turn to people who write it for a living.

Classic joke, here.

"Days Since Last Timezone Error: -1"

Seriously, we're talking corner cases that have corner cases.

"Well, if it's a Thursday, and you're left-handed, and you're in your underwear, and it's Indiana, that means it's what we call 9:30".

Serious time code is *full* of these kinda if-else statements.

@GeePawHill Even more if you try to accomodate all the other calendars people use... Ethiopia and Iran have their own civil calendrs, there's like a dozen or so religious calendars still in common use, many areas (eg. china) dual-wield calenders, etc.
which means "Thursday" may not exist, months and years (someimes even days) aren't the same length, weeks are their own mess, etc. etc.

@GeePawHill and each calendar has it's own solutions to the 'leap day'/'leap second' sorts of rounding errors, of course..

@miss_rodent @GeePawHill

Best is the Islamic calendar that uses 2 verified sightings of the moon after a new moon to define the start of a new month...

Cloudy? We'll add another day to this month! Perhaps 🙈

And only in area A. 'Cause in area B it's not cloudy.... 🤪

@heiglandreas @miss_rodent @GeePawHill time’s an interesting idea ‘cos it’s viewed from social, environmental, religious, political, and (worst in my opinion) business (in a capitalist society) perspectives.

It seems to me (so this could be plain wrong) that overzealous Enlightenment reductionism and a paucity of commonly used words for time in English lead to even more conceptual confusion. Maybe there’s a parallel with the way we tend to use “love” where the Greeks has a more sophisticated vocabulary.

Is the time we use for scientific measurement the same as the time we use for scheduling business meetings, social meetings, global military manoeuvres.

And then there’s calendars 😵‍💫

We can but try.

@heiglandreas @miss_rodent @GeePawHill That is *wild*!

@bammerlaan YEs.

Especially when one realizes that there are month starts at dates where - based on astronomical data - the moon could not have been observed at all. 🙈 🤣

/cc @miss_rodent @GeePawHill

@heiglandreas @bammerlaan @GeePawHill I'm also fond of traditional day-reckoning, a lot of places traditionally judge days by sunrise-to-sunrise, or sunset-to-sunset. Which means every day is a diffferent length from the proceeding one.

@miss_rodent Yeah! Awesome.

I've been top Mount Athos a few years back where the monasteries on the one side of the peninsula have different (liturgical) times than the ones on the other side. Simply because the sun "sinks" earlier on the eastern side of the peninsula due to the mountain ridge in the middle.... 🙈

/cc tha@bammerlaan@mastodon.nl @GeePawHill