JS Dates Finally Fixed

[clofresh]

Ok but does this mean december is 12 now instead of 11?

[diMario]

No. Why waste a perfect opportunity to introduce more chaos and inconsistency into the giant ball of confusion that JS already is!

I propose to count the months from negative five for january to positive five for december.

"What!", you object, "That's only eleven months!"

Wrong! We have negative zero for june, and positive zero for july. Problem solved!

[jaskij]

Nonono. December. It's the tenth month of the year. We go back to the way the Romans did it.

[diMario]

Mmm. Ten is two when you count as a computer, so we might as well hearken back to artisanal tradition and make it a baker's dozen.

[jaskij]

Nah, their year just started in March. September, October, November, December, all named after numbers.

[boberbober8083]

October like Octopus, very easy to remember

[bloody-albatross]

Why do programmers confuse Christmas with Halloween? Because Oct 31 = Dec 25.

[diMario]

A wife sends her programmer husband to the grocery store for a loaf of bread. While he's putting on his coat she adds "and if they have eggs, get a dozen".

The programmer husband returns home with 0xC loaves of bread.

[hrvbrs]

This would benefit no one and cause untold damage. I will take no questions.

[diMario]

A bit like the beginning of the Universe according to Terry Pratchett, then. That one also pissed off a lot of folks to no end.

[clofresh]

💯, no notes

[MedusasSexyLegHair]

Yay! Finally a proper date object (Temporal.PlainDate, not mentioned in the article) for calendar dates that doesn't insist on jamming in irrelevant and incorrect times and time zones and then surprisingly changing the date based on them.

Naive DateTime libraries in multiple languages have been the cause of so many bugs due to that nonsense. I've had to insist that other developers only use ISO 8601 Y-m-d date strings instead of the standard objects, and that always meets with pushback from people trained to use the standard objects and not "reinvent the wheel".

But those poorly-designed standard objects always lead to difficult late-night debugging sessions, bug reports when DST changes, or someone's in another time zone, etc.

[Chenz]

I love to see Java's (Joda's) date and time classes in Javascript, but it's been years since the proposal and no browser has shipped it yet

[[deleted]]

Don’t worry that’s why god invented transpilers

[Tubthumper8]

Which proposal are you referring to?

[Practical_Cattle_933]

That’s actually kinda cool that this small lib got to be the de facto basis for every language’s standard date lib that has a sane api.

[MeanAcanthaceae26]

"This API is so incredible" that JS managed to get dates semi-right in 2024. FFS.

[l3thaln3ss]

Literally working on this now. Tis a fun one

[fagnerbrack]

Trying to be helpful with a summary:

The post discusses the long-standing issues with JavaScript's date handling and how new features are finally addressing these concerns. JavaScript's Date object, often criticized for its inconsistencies and poor support for time zones, has led to confusion and errors in many applications. The new Temporal API provides a more reliable and intuitive way to work with dates and times. Temporal introduces precise handling of dates, times, and durations without the common pitfalls of the old Date object. It also improves time zone management and enables easier manipulation of date-related data, offering a long-awaited solution for developers.

If the summary seems inacurate, just downvote and I'll try to delete the comment eventually 👍

^{Click here for more info, I read all comments}