Comments on: Please Don’t Play Games With My Date and Time Data

By: Li D

Li D — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 03:51:09 +0000

In reply to kevin.

” The developers wrote it for themselves, not you, ”
So why is it released to public then?
Devrlopers can wank over their own self produced crap in the privacy of their own homes. No problem.
If people wanna write software, books, poetry to peruse themselves thats grear. But if its for public consumption, theres standards to be met.
One can grow a cabbage in their garden and water it with any manner of toxic crap and eat it yourself. But dont dare sell it or give it away if it dosnt meet standards.

By: John Hilton

John Hilton — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 02:07:43 +0000

Nice info tech-related blog.

By: Aaron Luchko

Aaron Luchko — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:02:46 +0000

@kevin

As someone who writes open source software I’m in agreement with Greg.

Clearly not every user has the time or capabilities to modify a package. If I put out a piece of software I have a certain moral responsibility to support the users who have invested time and effort in my project. I’m not talking free tech support but if there’s a feature that’s easy for my to do, useful for a lot of people, but slightly outside my personal usecase, I should put it in anyways.

If I waste their time investment with dumb bugs or features they’re fully justified in griping.

In this case it looks like the feature actually existed which makes sense. The one thing I really like with open source is if a bug really pisses you off, even if you do have the capabilities to fix it, it probably also pisses off someone who does have the capabilities and they will fix it.

By: Dunc

Dunc — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:56:28 +0000

Just you wait. Once Linux takes over the desktop, the marketing suits will be all over you too. 😉

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:45:05 +0000

That has surely been the problem with Windows (and Mac) but not Linux.

But I’m afraid it may start to be the problem with Linux.

But there’s always emacs.

By: Dunc

Dunc — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:30:18 +0000

How did Verity Stob put it? “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a simple application in possession of a stable feature set must be in want of an upgrade.”

Another thing that really annoys me is that we seem to have gone from viewing UI stability as A Good Thingâ?¢, to feeling that we have to completely re-work the UI every other release just so that people feel they’ve got something for their upgrade dollars.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:46:21 +0000

No, Jason, you are not being meta enough in your analysis. It is still the case that most date streams default to the silly version, it is still the case that most date representations are not adjustable, and it is still the case that the silly version being the default is insulting and annoying. And this is an exemplar of a broader problem, that over time in almost any development environment, but especially commercial ones where marketing is the tail wagging the dog, this sort of thing creeps in as soon as one no longer needs new features because the basic problem being addressed by the software has been solved.

Besides … Me? Rant?

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:25:27 +0000

Do I understand correctly that this was a long screaming rant, full of abusive language towards programmers, about the lack of a feature that you just didn’t even really look for? Wow. Just wow. I love the Africa stories, the Franken updates, science-related topics, etc., but these technology posts just seem to be increasingly (insert exasperated but trying not to be offensive adjective).

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:14:43 +0000

I use year, month, day because it is the only correct format.

By: Dunc

Dunc — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:41:01 +0000

You know what really pisses me off? When developers assume that everyone in the world uses that stupid American month/day/year date format. Heck, I've seen code that would crash when run under any different locale, because the developers were using the culture-sensitive ToString() method and then manipulating the resulting string on the assumption that it was culture-invariant and always in US format. There's a perfectly good means of getting the various date components from a DateTime instance without all that stupid mucking about with strings, you morons!