[LEAPSECS] USWP7A docs for 2013 September meetings

[Warner Losh]

On Aug 14, 2013, at 2:36 AM, Stephen Colebourne wrote:

> It is therefore essential to prevent leap seconds from being exposed

> to 99% of developers.


This attitude is why no real systems get leap seconds exactly right :( We do not protect programmers from leap days, and they get them right nearly always. Protecting programmers from leap seconds is one of the biggest mistakes people have made over the past 40 years, since now we have generations of programmers that program against a standard that doesn't match reality, and it should surprise nobody that it is never right.

I know you've had lots of experience with designing APIs, but I think that you came to the wrong conclusions by catering to ignorance rather than educating the ignorance away.

Warner