[LEAPSECS] Time is hard...

[Rob Seaman]

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:


> Happy new year and leap-second.

>

> Further evidence that average programmers should not be let near  

> timekeeping:

>

> http://gizmodo.com/5121822/official-fix-for-the-zune-30-fail


Not to discount the bug reported, but there are lots of other more  
complex issues with such a device.  In addition to the question of why  
the Zune should care particularly about the date in the first place -  
something to do with syncing with the mothership?  The bug's  
description online, including the official support page, is really poor.

Knowing a little something about data compression, I would suggest  
that such a device has lots of much more complex and subtle  
compression issues.  Also a variety of embedded device issues,  
encryption issues, etc.

One could say that an "average" programmer shouldn't be allowed to  
work on encryption without thoroughly digesting Bruce Schneier's  
books.  I think rather highly of Dave Mills' NTP book, but if one  
could find a copy on the shelf of your local Borders, it would be  
dwarfed by the number of security books, itself not a huge segment of  
the computer section of a bookstore.  All those ITU "above-average"  
experts could have better spent the past nine years writing a few more  
books to describe what they do for a living.

What precisely is an "average" programmer, anyway?  This is a very  
multimodal discipline.  There mostly appear to be OS kernel/device  
driver hackers and scientific programmers on this list.  The  
observatory just rolled out a new web page, an entirely different  
regime of expertise.  My brother-in-law works in banking, originally  
Cobal.  GUI programmers.  We employ a lot of instrument programmers  
who use anything from C++ to LabVIEW to microcode.  Telescope control  
system programmers who use various messaging protocols.  Pipeline  
programmers.  Our archive is an Enterprise Java code base.  XML.   
Databases.  (All our best DB programmers eventually end up getting  
hired away by Amazon or Google.)  Grid and parallel processing - much  
harder than leap seconds.  And dozens of other major divisions.

I can personally attest to the stupid lpd tricks the BSD line printer  
daemon can be jollied into doing :-)  (CUPS isn't nearly as flexible.)

It's been an hour.  Anything blow?

Rob