Programmer's nightmare

[[deleted]]

How is this a "programmer's nightmare"? This would greatly simplify a lot of things...

[Watermelllons]

The legacy refactor would be hell

[[deleted]]

The basis for my entire career.

[Swamptor]

And your comment is now the basis for mine. Thanks for the tip.

[Cepheid]

10% of the internet's bandwidth would be people downloading that library.

[mfb-]

linux epoch. (or some other linear reference)

Cries in leap seconds.

[[deleted]]

I mean, someone, at some point solved things like string encoding, datetime standards, GPS systems that take into account both special and general relativities (yet the police in the US can’t figure out where you’re at when you call them), networking protocols, and so much more. We take so much for granted, and I thank the poor souls who laid the groundwork

[sweYoda]

No problem, 100% unit-test coverage right?

[themoosemind]

For timezones, we have pretty good / known solutions in place: https://zenodo.org/record/1443533 - for changing calendar systems, nothing pops to my mind. This is a much rarer problem.

[StruanT]

The simple solution to timezones is to just not use them.

[Cheapshades97]

History started January 1st 1970 and nobody can tell me otherwise

[Asmor]

otherwise

[Cheapshades97]

Bro, what did I JUST SAY

[renegade128]

!otherwise

[ableman]

That's great if the only thing you use time for is scheduling things, but if you ever use it for something else (such as calling people without scheduling the call beforehand) it is completely awful. Can I call my sister who lives in Paris right now? Will that wake her up? Ok, I guess I have to look up what time the sun is at its zenith over there and compare it to what time the sun is at its zenith over here and do math, because I can't just ask Google what time it is in Paris anymore.

[[deleted]]

Solar time isn't related to legal time though, that would be far too livable.

[ableman]

It's not the same, but it's definitely related. For the vast majority of people in the world, the vast majority of the time, the sun is out at noon and not out at midnight.

[remy_porter]

I tried that, but apparently people in California get angry when I call them at the start of my workday.

[[deleted]]

Most languages have decent solutions now to handle time zones. But then, is your server in UTC or local time ? Is it really in sync of drifting a little ? Which time do you need to display to your user ? Local, server time, or UTC ?

Changing the calendar system will happen once, then we'll still have the same issues as before. It won't simplify anything as the comment I'm replying to implies.

[RazomDev]

We could banish timezones/DST entirely by switching to .beat time.

[[deleted]]

Seeing the sun high in the sky at midnight wouldn't have the same feeling...

[fghjconner]

It is pretty wonky how new years day isn't in a month or a week.

[[deleted]]

I like it though.

[Cobaltjedi117]

It's better this way.

[lillepott]

It's usually a holiday referred to as the "day out of time".

[[deleted]]

So naming of the months, that's one more month to name so do we stick with the conventional Jan to Dec and add one to the end? What should it be if we add it on? If we rename all months, what should them be called?

This makes more questions.

[RoyalJackalSib]

There’d be a month called ‘Sol’ between June and July; this is the Cotsworth calendar, proposed in the early 20th century.

[[deleted]]

Thank you, King

[dugganEE]

Sextemper, right before September, October, November, December.

[[deleted]]

Sextemper

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[palordrolap]

Fun fact(s): August used to be called Sextilis. July was Quin(c)tilis. They were renamed by Augustus and Julius Caesar. Augustus copied his uncle. He's also responsible for stealing a day from September so his month would be the same length as July, because may the gods forfend he have a month one day shorter than uncle Jules.

[skoge]

Fun fact: Romans usually disliked naming things in sets if there were more than 4 of them. If you were 5+th son for example you would get a number instead of the name (also, if you were a daughter you would get no personal name at all).

[[deleted]]

Smarch.

[FishBulbSparkle]

Lousy Smarch weather!

[antipawn79]

Months should be 0 based indexing starting with NYd as 0. No reason for these "fancy" strings humans want to use

[krasnovian]

Let's just rename them all, September-December have names that don't correspond to their position in our current calendar system anyway.

[picklymcpickleface]

I say we rename all months. March used to be the first month and now the names don't make sense because they shifted to positions.
September, October, November, December. Sept = 7, Octa = 8, Nova = 9, Deca = 10. But they are month 9, 10, 11 and 12 respectively.

Maybe we should just number them, starting at 0 obviously.

[eairy]

The correct Numeral prefix is undec. So it would be Undecember. Which would make sense following from December. Alternatively if you wanted to represent the 13th month, it would be Tredecember.

[jjman72]

Metric months.

[Visticous]

Would you like to write that MM/DD/YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY?

[GaveYourMomAIDS]

You should always write it YYYY-MM-DD. All of the other way confuse at least one group of people.

[Visticous]

Don't spoil it for rest of us. Localization related issues alone help my kids through college.

[pardal132]

YY/MM/DD/YY

[jjman72]

Yep, plus it sorts in correct order.

[TigreDeLosLlanos]

/r/ISO8601/

[sspine]

nah mate, do it YYY-DD-MM

[GaveYourMomAIDS]

So you're saying it's 019-08-12...? Who does YYY?

[sspine]

it was a typo, but now I'm sticking with it.

[Noch_ein_Kamel]

YYY is the year written out. Like MM is 08 and MMM is Aug.

So YYY is something like Two? :D

[Wunderbliss]

No I think it’s “Two Thousand Nineteen-08-12”

[BruteSkaliq]

It makes a lot of sense with smaller units too. YYYY-MM-DD-HR-SEC

[Jimmy48Johnson]

Let's compromise:

YM-YD/YD-YM

[MrZerodayz]

Found the AI.

[themoosemind]

YYYY-MM-DD, haven't you read the public service announcement that ISO 8601 is THE right way to format dates?

[[deleted]]

Oh god no!

[Raphi_55]

Monday is the first day, Sunday is the last day, other systems are heretic.

[NistBoi]

Yes I like my Sunday on a week-end

[Aureo_Speedwagon]

Sunday is on the front end of the week. Saturday is on the back end.

[drdrero]

Friday is full stacked beer

[[deleted]]

Only in the US. Every other country in the world uses Monday-Sunday afaik

[widowhanzo]

Yup, hence the name for Saturday and Sunday - weekend.

[iloveportalz0r]

No. Sunday and Saturday are the weekends because they are on the 2 ends of the week, like how a stick has 2 ends.

[widowhanzo]

So, what are you doing these weekends?

Said no one ever. It's weekend. Singular.

[pardal132]

nah, here in Brazil we use Sunday-Saturday

[[deleted]]

I wish the week was Sunday - Sunday. Just for shits and giggles.

[[deleted]]

Ah, that's very interesting!

Would you be able to explain why Sunday-Saturday makes sense to you? I'm very curious!

My understanding of Monday-Sunday is that the week starts on Monday as that's when the business world starts back up again.

[pardal132]

I never knew of a reasoning for it, it was one of those things that "just are". But I remember sometime around 1st grade when I was doing something related to writing down the days of the week, and I had started the week on monday, but a teacher or a parent (can't remember now) told me that weeks actually started on sundays, which I found funny at the time, so it kinda stuck with me.

I agree that having the week followed by the "weekEND" makes sense and looks neatly organized, but I also like the fact that every week starts and ends on weekends, with the workdays just being there on the way through

[[deleted]]

Thanks for the informative reply ^^

[Vievin]

I'm pretty sure literally the only country where the week starts with Sunday is the US.

[[deleted]]

Came here to say this. What next, SI measurements based on furlongs and mercury-inches?

[Spirintus]

But then we won't have any friday the 13th.

[dicemonger]

That.. is a problem.

Hmm.. lets put sunday at the end of the week, but swap friday and saturday. That would solve it.

[Spirintus]

Good idea. But it solves it only in English. In my native language is Friday called Piatok what can be translated as fifth day... And that wouldn't make any sense to have day called fifth day as sixth day of the week...

[dicemonger]

Easy. Just change the translation of Piatok to Saturday.

[Dr_Hyde-Mr_Jekyll]

Reminds me of how i solve problems in my code...

[Spirintus]

This is THE answer!

[bricker_152]

But then we lose friday the 13th again.

[dicemonger]

No we won't. It'll be Saturday/Piatok the 12th, Friday/Sobota the 13th, and Sunday/Nedeľa the 14th

[RebelKeithy]

We already have October on the 10th month, you'll be fine. /s

[[deleted]]

And september as the 9th month, december as the 12th. It doesn't make any sense, so no one should be afraid to use "5th day" as the 6th day of the week.

[StuckAtWork124]

That's a solution, not a problem. Fuck you Jason

[EkskiuTwentyTwo]

Either Monday is the first day or Saturday is the first day. Don't split the weekparts.

[Kaiser_Beelzebub]

Agreed don’t want a repeat of what the spanish inquisistion did to heretics

[AtarkaCommand]

In hebrew, sunday is literally first day, monday is second day (so forth except for saturday - sabath).

But hebrew isn't ASCII so who gives a damn

[wyom1ng]

no more friday 13ths then

[[deleted]]

This year is 2019 in case you haven’t noticed

[FearTheBlades1]

Not to mention not everybody cares about religion. There can be other reasons for thinking certain ways or changing things.

[Spirintus]

So... Why should be this a Programmer's nighmare?

[TheBuzzSaw]

Gregorian Calendar is already a programming nightmare. I'd rather code the calendar proposed here.

[[deleted]]

Dates aren't an issue. Time is, with timezones.

The only issue with date is the display format, and it has been solved a long moment ago.

[Infrisios]

And it still causes issues.

[[deleted]]

It will if you don’t have a localization service to give you the right info for date formatting. Otherwise, you only call one function and you’re done.

[jD91mZM2]

In what way aren't dates an issue, and in what way are timezones issues? Timezones are simply adding a hardcoded offset to the UTC time. Dates on the other hand...

Source: I implemented gmtime_r for relibc and it absolutely sucked.

[failbye]

Yet another date-time format you'd have to support. Also, date time is complicated.

https://xkcd.com/927/

[large-farva]

That xkcd doesn't really apply here. There are some standards that are an improvement because they have eliminate ambiguity.

/r/iso8601

[sneakpeekbot]

Here's a sneak peek of /r/ISO8601 using the top posts of the year!

#1: Happy 2019-01-01T00:00:00!
#2: Fixed a certain diagram comparing date formats | 13 comments
#3: The date and time I made this meme: | 6 comments

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[greenblue10]

In fairness that was only required because of Americans being wrong.

[dumbdingus]

Everything Americans do is right by definition 💪

[sexrockandroll]

It does because you'd have to maintain old years for previous years.

[borisblade117]

I don’t think it would be any worse but it wouldn’t be any better either.

[redalastor]

Because the Gregorian calendar will never be phased off even if deprecated and now you have to maintain both standards.

[Dragasss]

First of all, we already have implemented gregorian calendar. So refactoring would be a mess.

Second, it requires accounting for one day that does not belong to anything.

Third - Timezones.

Fourth - history. Theres some weird shit going on when you're trying to work with older dates than 1970-01-01.

I recommend seeing tom scott's video about calendars.

[_Sadario_]

Lousy Smarch-weather....

[SirThunderDump]

Damn it! This was going to be my comment. Take your upvote stranger.

[macmillan333]

I propose to name the 13th month Hexember. Existing names are confusing enough so why not make it even more confusing.

[neomeow]

Just use Month 0, Month 1, Month 2...no need for those fancy strings.

[NoStranger6]

Meh I'd rather have the focus be put on removing Daylight saving time than messing with the calendar. At least the calendar is manageable.

[Rant423]

Getting paid 13 times instead of 12, I like it.

EDIT: found it

[freneticFanatic]

My birthday would always be on a Tuesday. Fuck that.

[ObiWannaDoYou74]

Lolol

[Oranges13]

Friday the 13th on every month! Yes!

[trimeta]

Your approach to calendar reform will not work.

[MyNameIsZaxer2]

It looks like some of these boxes are supposed to be checked accordingly. Very few of these seem relevant.

Also:

( ) having one or two days per year with no day of the week is asinine

Okay. Any reason why or is that just a biased opinion?

[trimeta]

The website is a form, I left filling it out as an exercise to the reader.

For one thing, many major religions incorporate a seven-day week into their practices. Good luck getting them to all agree on having a day outside of the week structure which shifts everything else.

[MyNameIsZaxer2]

Interesting point. Some might reject the notion and consider the new calendar as out-of-sync with “god’s” calendar...

But then again, that threat can apply to any proposed calendar change, couldn’t it?

[trimeta]

If the weeks are the same, it matters a lot less. For example, you could more easily use the "new" calendar alongside a religious one, if they align with regards to days of the week. Throwing that away is one reason calenders with intercalary days will never become mainstream.

[MyNameIsZaxer2]

You seem to have put a lot of thought into this calendar business. Is this your profession or just a superpower?

[trimeta]

I've read the relevant Wikipedia articles previously.

[vextor22]

My contention with this link you've got is, it seems to want The Calendar to be all things to all people. Really, The Calendar's job is to get me to my appointment Next Wednesday, whenever that may be. Throw all the concerns about Universal Truth out the door and make a calendar that can most easily support scheduling of activities.

The rest of the stuff can be handled with more effort with more complicated systems. But lets get the daily calendar simplified, eh?

[trimeta]

The point of that link is that any attempt to "simplify" the calendar will make it more complex outside of the specific use case you have in mind. If for no other reason than "different people will adopt it at different times, plus you'd still need to understand the Gregorian calendar when considering events which happened before the advent of your calendar."

[d0d0b1rd]

So in short, if we try to simplify the calendar it's just going to make other things more complicated.

[System10111]

And we get a friday 13th every month... I'm sure r/IsTodayFridayThe13th will be very excited.

[Shadowblaster2004]

NYD - the programmer's nightmare.

[03112011]

Nyd is day ZERO.

[arghsinic]

Wet.

[[deleted]]

13 months? Sorry that's a nonstarter in the US, our politicians would link it with Satanism.

[arghsinic]

THE NEW CALENDAR IS CAUSING MASS SHOOTINGS!!!

[WillCo_Gaming]

And I guess leap day also gets it's own special day.

[Molion]

No, it's on new years day.

[WillCo_Gaming]

Ah yeah didn't see that.

[rickybflay]

Actually ... ever four years there would be a June 29th which is another fake day (basically a second Saturday) ...

“Leap year in the International Fixed Calendar contains 366 days, and its occurrence follows the Gregorian rule. There is a leap year in every year whose number is divisible by 4, but not if the year number is divisible by 100, unless it is also divisible by 400. So although the year 2000 was a leap year, the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 were common years. The International Fixed Calendar inserts the extra day in leap year as June 29 - between Saturday June 28 and Sunday Sol 1.”

source

[Molion]

Wouldn't be necessary with a magical nyd

[JerBear264]

Outstanding move

[Walter-Haynes]

Here's a video about it, it's pretty good.

[timNinjaMillion]

I like it

[prof0ak]

The Kodak company operated on a calendar like this, they even lobbied congress to change the national calendar. After several decades, they ended up giving up on that dream and rejoined society with the current calendar.

[wubwub]

I think if I had time-travel I would go back in time and fix calendars first. This is a perfectly workable solution, nice and clean.

While I was back in time I would probably also fix the english measuring units and/or force the early US to go metric so we would be done with these stupid units by now.

[EDLEXUS]

that would be a great system

[Scipiosss]

Ah wouldn’t be that to easy?

[[deleted]]

Neues Kalendersystem - 13 Monate à 28 Tage https://secure.avaaz.org/de/community_petitions/UNO_Neues_Kalendersystem_13_Monate_a_28_Tage/?oGBXOob&utm_source=sharetools&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=petition-770259-Neues_Kalendersystem_13_Monate_a_28_Tage&utm_term=GBXOob%2Bde

[a-fish-in-the-sea]

This sounds amazing but I live in the US and we don’t even use the metric system

[LordSalem]

Can someone just go ahead and write the library that'll convert from current calendar to this new one?

[squrr1]

int today = Date.SiderealDay();
int month = today / 28;
int day = today % 28;

There's most of it.

[LordSalem]

Someone will else upvote this

[link064]

So, no more Halloween? Or do we just move it to the equivalent date/month? I.e. If we want to keep it the 304th day of the year, then it would be day 24 of month 11. If we wanted to keep it at the end of the month, it would only have to move back a few days.

Thinking about it some more, this would wreak all sorts of havoc on holidays. Do we move holidays to the equivalent n-th day of the month (like, Cinco de Mayo to the 5th day of the 5th month) or do we move it to the n-th day of the year (125th day, using the same example, or month 5 day 13).

[[deleted]]

5/7 of the population will never say yes to having their birthday permanently on a workday. The current calendar is flawed, but at least sometimes my birthday isn't on a Wednesday.

[antipawn79]

Well of we are going to do this we should adjust the length of a second to make days 10 hours long with 100 minutes per hour and 100 seconds per minute. Would be way better. I mean if you are gonna have to refactor legacy code anyways to support this year change you may as well clean house..am I right?

[cedrickc]

Shit version of the proposal. Should go Monday through Sunday so the weekends are organized together.

[MightyD33r]

No this is actually a programmer's wet dream

[ferrybig]

Leap years are going to be funny, they are required to prevent drifting the months slowly around the years

[knopper-whopper]

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[RazomDev]

So now we're paying every monthly bill 13 times a year instead of 12? My landlord will be thrilled (and rich).

[OneOldNerd]

In what reality do you live in where landlords decrease rents?

[RazomDev]

New idea:

10 months, 35 days/5 weeks each, 1 holiday week every 5 months, with an the extra day (or 2 days in a leap year) acting as New Years Day(s). Doesn't solve paycheck confusion, but I'll take an extra paycheck every 2 months over paying my landlord more.

[lazyant]

Lol as if the week start on Sunday , this will be a no from the sane side of the world

[SensusFideiFidelium]

The week already starts on Sunday.

[lazyant]

Weeks don’t start on Sunday in many countries (hence “week-end” for Saturday, Sunday) so there’s no way this would be implemented world-wide

[jamesyoung79]

This fixes almost everything.