[LEAPSECS] ] Fractional US civil time period representation is brittle

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Sat Jan 21 09:54:05 EST 2012


In message <4F1ACCFC.2010604 at comcast.net>, Gerard Ashton writes:


>The "REAL" proposal appears to include the necessary tools (when fleshed

>out) but it would be easy to misapply the tools, [...]


Fiskars once won in court, arguing that people who use tools incorrectly
is not their responsiblity as a maker of chain-saws.

I'm going to make the same argument:

My proposed API does not solve all imaginable problems relating to
time, in particular it does not solve the "programmer is clueless
about time" problem, but it does try to make it easier for programmers
to do things right, than for them to make mistakes.

But it does solve the problem that you cannot ask the operating system
what time it is.

--
Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


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