Basics of working with date and time for Software Engineers, Developers and Programmers
Mastering Time in Software Time is one of the trickiest concepts in software development. If you don’t handle it correctly, things can break in surprising ways. This post will give you a solid understanding of how to think about and work with time in software. We’ll cover four key topics: Time Offsets – Why you should always attach offsets to your date-time values. Time Zones & Daylight Savings – Why time zones are not the same as time offsets. Unix Timestamps – The binary representation of time. ISO 8601 Timestamps – The text format for working with time. I assume you already know how a calendar and a clock work—otherwise, this would be a kids' video, not one for programmers. 1. Time Offsets A time offset is the number of hours added or subtracted from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to get local time. Take a look at this UTC offset map . Each vertical line represents a time offset boundary. The UK, located around 0° longitude, uses UTC+0 , also known as Greenwich Me...
