Programming aside, where I live in Southern Europe we have a tradition according to which leap years bring bad luck. After 2020, I don’t know what to expect… nuclear apocalypse maybe?
I worked in broadcasting (programming broadcasting applications), everything is done with PTP (Precise Time Protocol) and TC (timecode) in video. We had to support leap second, it’s not as easy, but in the end, insert black frames for 1s and that’s it.
I’m not worried about my code, I’m (very slightly) worried about all the date libraries I used because I didn’t want code that shit again for the billionth time.
Yeah, I’m generally using the common data/time libraries in most (if not all) languages and I’m pretty sure they’ve all been through more than 1 leap year at this point. I just never 100% trust the code I don’t control - 99.9% maybe, but never 100.
I never 100% trust the code I do control. Partially because a lot of it is inherited but also because I know corners were cut but I can’t always remember when and where
32bit systems will stop working. The Unix timestamp, which increases by 1 every second and started the first second of 1970, will reach the max of 32 bit integers. Bad things will follow.
This has already been patched on all 64 bit OSes though - whatever 32 bit systems are still in existence in another 15 years will just roll their dates back 50 years and add another layer of duct tape to their jerry-rigged existence
And now that every time library has been updated, we’re safe until our grandchildren reimplement those bugs in a language that has not yet been invented.
I went to uni in the mid 90s when Y2K prep was all the rage, went back to do another degree 20 years later. It was interesting to see the graffiti in the CS toilets. Two digits up to about 1996, four digits for a decade, then back to two.
In every project I’ve ever worked on, there’s been somebody who must have been like, “HurDur Storing timestamps in UTC is for losers. Nyeaahh!”
And if I ever find that person, I’m going to get one of those foam pool noodles, and whack him/her over the head with it until I’ve successfully vented all my frustrations.
The only time using UTC breaks down is when any sort of time change gets involved.
If I say I want a reminder at 9am six months from now and you store that as UTC, a day light savings change will mean I get my reminder an hour early or late depending on where in the world I am
So TL;DR: there might be unexpected time zone rule changes in the future. The solution presented in the article is to store both UTC and local time, so the application can easily adjust itself if such change happens.
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