----- Original Message ----- > From: "Chris Adams" <c...@cmadams.net>
> Once upon a time, Patrick W. Gilmore <patr...@ianai.net> said: >> But time _DOES_ flow. The seconds count >> 58, 59, 60, 00, 01, … >> If you can’t keep up, that’s not UTC’s fault. [ ... ] > Leap second handling code is not well-tested and is an ultimate corner > case. There's been debate about abolishing leap seconds; with all the > every-day bugs people have to deal with, few people set up a special > test environment to handle something that may never happen again (until > you get less than six months warning that it'll happen at least once > more), and even then, tests tend to focus on what broke before, because > it is really hard to test EVERYTHING. If this particular issue is your beat -- or your avocation -- you really should read both these blog postings, and all their comments; they are nearly comprehensive: http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time and http://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time They are also both funny as hell. To myself be comprehensive, I should point out a companion piece about names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ and there are similar lists for phone numbers, geography, civil addresses and gender, linked from this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11321236 If you write any code that has to interface with the outside world, these are pieces I think you should read at least annually. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink j...@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274
