Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

utc is for a specific moment in time (deterministic with great precision for everyday use).

"9:30am local time" may be ambiguous/unknown (the rules may not exist yet)

Using the same programming type for both may cause confusion.

How do you express geographic coordinates? Noon in London and in NY are different moments in time (it may be important if you want to have a remote meeting).




No need for something as brittle as geographic coordinates or addresses. Time Zone names are the right abstraction. A given location very rarely [edit: adopts another] time zone (unless in case of annexations, handovers of territory, etc.), but time zone rules (zone offset from UTC, DST, etc.) change all the time. A consequence of this is that the time zone database of applications should be updated every few months!


"brittle" ?

Your suggestion to define places by their timezone name is ok (it may work in many cases).


"Complicated" then. One would have to consult a map to find out the time zone from geographical coordinates. The time zone is really everything needed to properly perform timezone-aware arithmetic.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: