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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • The drawbacks are many and the benefits are few.

    Watching foreign films would be a pain, where is this in the world again, what does 19:00 mean for them? More exposition, or you just have to guess based on languag and accent.

    I need this work done by our team in XYZ country, what are their working hours? (wow, look at that, still using timezones?)

    When you arrive somewhere on holiday, now you have to get a sense of the time there. Or continually be thinking “what’s that in my home time?/what’s that in solar time”, which is why solar time just makes more sense.

    People aren’t going to stop thinking in solar time, ever. We’re hard-wired to be awake with the sun. It doesn’t matter what the numbers are, you will associate them with the sun. The question then becomes, would we rather all use roughly the same numbers (timezones, what we currently have), or different numbers (everyone using UTC).

    Using UTC solves only 1 problem, you can say verbally to someone across the world, let’s make the meeting 15:00 - but this is already easily solved by using a calendar which converts for you…

    There’s a reason we have never used a single non-solar time, it’s just worse and I think there’s a reason these posts always end up on programmer focused places on the internet. Yes, I’m sure their job is annoying, and it would be easier to not have to solve time conversion problems, but the time conversion problems wouldn’t even go away if you forced everyone to use UTC. You’d just start having to do conversions to solar time, or looking up waking hours (which is just timezones)

    This is a solved problem.




  • Which I think we can all agree is more work than what we currently need to.

    It’s not just one addition, it’s 2 operations following knowing what time midnight is to understand what the solar time it is: what time is it now, minus what time is their midnight, and then you have to add that back to what your midnight is to get a sense of the time. Or you just start thinking in solar time WHICH IS WHAT WE ALREADY DO.

    That’s 2 calculations. Currently we do 0.

    Innately knowing what time means in films, talking to people over the phone, going to a new country. It would be a huge pain in the arse.

    "They met up at 13:00“ great. So where are they in this film? Forcing exposition where currently you might let it be vague.

    People who advocate for one timezone simply haven’t thought it through.



  • Because it makes getting an intuitive sense of what solar time it is somewhere harder.

    Can I call my grandma in a different country? Hmm what time is average midnight there. Okay 8 (so far, same thing as looking up a timezone), and it’s 18:00 now, so 10 hours after midnight, which is like my 23:00. Needlessly complicated with extra steps for the average person.

    Sure, you can say, I’ll call you X and that will mean the same thing everywhere, but does not have any information about solar time. And these days, it’s automatically converted if you use a calendar (which you should). This is the point of programming, to make the USERS life easier, not the dev. The end is more important than the means, I think we can agree.

    Or: what time is it where my grandma is? Okay, cool, I have a sense of what that is immediately after knowing the answer.

    There are reasons we do things this way. Working roughly to solar times has more benefits than being able to say a time and it mean the same moment everywhere.

    I say we leave things the way they are, works okay.


  • Thank you! Drives me up the wall that when people suggest this and they haven’t thought it through, and that it might make other things worse.

    I’d say for everyday usability, what we have is way better. Sure, you deal with timezones, but at least once you know what time it is there you have a good sense of what part of the day they are in.

    Currently you look up the timezone, maybe do some maths (but let’s be real, you just search and get given the time) and then you immediately have a good sense of what the time is there, oh cool it’s 7AM.

    If we all had the same timezone: you look it up, and then you HAVE to do maths. Why? Oh their midnight is 8, and it’s 15 now, so 7 hours after midnight.

    Your mind immediately has gone to oh it’s 7AM, but NO, in this new reality, it’s 15:00 everywhere and where you live midnight is 14:00, so that means where you live it would be like your 21:00.

    No matter what time you pick to anchor what time of day that place is, the problem persists. And now you just have replaced the problem of looking up timezones, with looking up when the sun is at some point, and then needing to convert that to get a sense of what time it is there according to the sun.

    This would be shit, when you get to a new country when travelling you have to relearn what the numbers “feel” like.

    Let’s just keep what we have, this is a solved problem.


  • As a non-software engineer, feels weird that they’re making this distinction.

    I don’t have much to do with engines either.

    I take engineer to mean: designs stuff that does some task, involving SOME kind of calculation.

    Visual designer: not an engineer

    Piping designer: not an engineer (although this one felt weird, that’s what the piping designer corrected me to say, so)

    Chemical engineer: ya

    Mechanical engineer: yeah

    Software engineer: totally different flavour, but still yeah

    Language is what we want it to be.

    Web designers presumably still need to script things, I reckon that counts 👍




  • Realistically, how far are you from the shops? And would it 1. Take any longer for you to just walk there to pick it up? 2. Do you often NEED to save the extra time it takes to get there and back?

    If the answers to both are mostly no, then just don’t use delivery and call ahead and get pickup instead. Going for a walk is great!

    I used to live 25-30 minute round trip from the shops, still never ordered delivery because it’s not any faster (usually slower), not sure why people are willing to pay extra for it, and screw over the restaurants in the process.

    Would actually like to know other’s point of view on this.