It is only ~21th on the list of future problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_formatting_and_storage_bugs
Don’t worry, we’re not far away from 2038, when 32 bit unix time rolls over 😅
I will be so excited if we make it that far, double if I’m alive to see it.
We won’t be around, but Unix time will be.
This is correct Unix time is eternal i kinda wished we would change the calendar again 1970 is just as arbitrary as 2024 years ago so why not set the mark at 1970. Tomorrow will be Jan 1st 0055
What would Y10K cigarettes be like?
Superweed.
Y10k’s gonna be wild
There is always the assumption that we will colonize the galaxy in 7000 years. When really we will still be on earth and someone is still running and old FreeBSD machine in prod and just doesn’t want to update cause it still works.
I said this to my father in 98/99ish when we were already updating to four digits anyway and he told me I was crazy.
We’ll see who has the last laugh.
Storing the date as offset in seconds from 1970 in 64bit should last to about the end of the universe, after that it’s not my problem.
Programmers in the next universe iteration: deep sigh
Imagine thinking that’ll be the biggest date-related computing problem for a galactic society.
If you really want to make programmers despair, point out:
- massive variations in day, month and year lengths on different worlds.
- some worlds may not have “months” (no moons, or many moons).
- ambiguous definition of “year” for multi-star systems.
- days may be longer than years (hello Venus).
- communication latency across interstellar distances.
- tine dilation.
Relief point: we will still be using unix timestamp.
Anxious point: we will still be using unix timestamp.
That’s easy. We’d just use Greg time.
Greg’s age and mood is highly deterministic, and he has atoms in his body present from the big bang. His sense of time varies, and seems to accelerate as he gets older, and he will tell you about it with extreme detail down to either 2 decimal places or 3 beers. If you call him up and ask him what time it is, the degree of the obscenities used in his reply is usually a good enough correction coefficient when calling over long distances.
Also two of his kids hate him, and his current wife is thinking of leaving him; all countable metrics that one can use to ascertain what stage in his life Greg is at, and thus what the local date/time in your area is, based on all the above Greg stats.
I will just rely on ISO 8602 to introduce a universal time format
Then your only challenge will be converting to and from human-friendly formats and cleansing user input. Easy.
Also, interplanetary timezones and leaps.
Don’t we technically already have to account for time dilation for things like GPS satellites
tine dilation
Holds up fork and squints at it
It’s what happens when James uses the good dining forks to unjam the cupboard door again.
03:14:07 UTC, 19 January 2038.
