As a programmer, DST creates tons of bugs for anything using time and is annoying. But whatever, I guess I get paid either way.
As a parent, DST is miserable. It’s miserable as an adult, also, but multiplied misery when you have to get up early to ruin your kid’s sleep. And then that night they’re not ready to suddenly go to sleep an hour early so you lose an extra hour…
I hope Poland succeeds.
As a programmer, I would never put anything except UTC or Unix time into a computer program or database. The front end can show the user whatever localized bullshit they want to see.
But if you consume data from something not in utc and need to get it there, there is still room for bugs.
I changed our systems a previous job to store all in utc and got made to put it back to jst (Japan). That was … Fun
Every year when the clocks change people are cranky and start demanding this kind of thing be eliminated. Politicians capitalize on it and say they will do something about it. In a couple of weeks everyone forgets about it.
In the end, the government can’t do anything about the tilt of the Earth and there is no time system that can be devised that will make everyone happy. Many people like having more light in the evening and wouldn’t be happy if DST were eliminated. People are going to be cranky for a couple of weeks in the year but it’s generally considered worth putting up with so people have more daylight in the evening rather than having it before they wake up.
We can get rid of DST while keeping that extra hour if we default to summer time, not winter. DST statistically causes many accidents twice a year, because our brains aren’t ready / thrown off their rhythm, so making away with it would have a positive impact outside of not being cranky anymore
Programmer as well and fuck that shit.
My cats are used to a very specific schedule… now they’re gonna wake me up 1 hour early for the next many weeks. Great!
I wonder if the sleep-change fucks up our brains and that’s why more people aren’t upset about it.
Until this comment, I’d completely forgotten about how the most recent time-change messed up me and the puppy I’ve been training, because of course she needs to pee as soon as she wakes up at 6am every day…
Instead of DST, why didn’t we just shift working hours one hour earlier in winter? (I am in favor of getting rid of DST. I’m just asking why we decided to shift the clock instead of shifting working hours)
Changing working hours would be decided by individual businesses and inconsistencies on this would be a logistical nightmare. Delivery of materials are suddenly an hour later and you have a bunch of people standing around with nothing to do. Or maybe it’s earlier than usual and it comes before your business is open.
Signage about business hours would have to be changed twice per year. A customer not aware of the change in business hours may show up too early or two late.
And it would be an insane amount of work to change all the schedules of automated systems to conform with business hour changes that happen twice per year.
So to avoid these kinds of problems you need the entire society to change their schedules consistently. It’s easier to change the clocks than to change everything other than the clocks.
Seasonal opening hours are not something new.
Cool, that makes sense. Thanks for the reply!
DST seems to be such a mess. We should start doing it state by state if EU doesn’t want to do it all at the same time. Poland should lead the way and be the first
YES! Get rid of that dumb shit!
Not sure what programmers have to say about this though. Ideally DST would’ve been scrapped like 30 years ago back when there were a lot fewer people using computers, so a lot of code wouldn’t need updating as soon as such a change is implemented, but waiting will only worsen it.
I think keeping summertime is the better option. Having a bit of sunlight when you come home from school or work in winter would be priceless. Even if it means darker mornings.I like the switches, more sunlight is better!
You do realize, the sun isn’t hanging in there for an hour longer, just because we on earth made a change to some kind of time keeping device? We will still have 24h hours a day and the sun will still shine the amount of time it shines.
Edit: I see a couple of downvotes. Could some one give some arguments?
It’s not like there’s more sunlight, it’s just offsetting where in the day you get the most sunlight. Turn the clock back and you get sunlight earlier in the day, and turn the clock forward you get more sunlight in the afternoon/evening.
As someone living just north enough in Denmark, winters are brutal depending on your job, and I’ve mostly had factory-like jobs where I spent most days inside without sunlight, so I’d drive to work in darkness, spend most of the day in artificial light, no windows, and then drive home in darkness.Yep, I am well aware of all of that, I am a Swede living north of Stockholm
I even worked 12h alternating day/night shifts.
And damn, summer time makes a huge difference when getting off work at 20:00…
The solution would be your employer adjusting the shift times, so they allow everyone to catch some sun. Ideally you would work two hours less in winter than in summer.
I think keeping summertime is the better option. Having a bit of sunlight when you come home from school or work in winter would be priceless. Even if it means darker mornings.
This is why I doubt we’ll get rid of it. A majority of people seem to dislike dst but not for the same reasons. I get up around 6. That already means about 3 hours of darkness during winter mornings as is. And in the afternoon I’m indoors anyway because it’s cold. It’d be more convenient for me to sacrifice an hour of daylight on summer evenings. Then again the sun rising around 4 would be kind of a waste.
Just do it like the chinese do it:
Width of 4 time zones all on Beijing time. (most eastern)
So companies in center/west just shift their business hours instead.
Nobody says your company has to open at 8h, starting at 10 is perfectly legal!
The laws for business hours in Germany are unfathomably strict.
Hi, I’m a software developer. DST is a nightmare because it makes the clock jump (skip an hour in one direction, meaning there are wall clock times which don’t exist, or backwards, meaning there are wall clock times that exist twice). I don’t care whether we will settle on summer or winter time but please, just don’t make it jump.
As a software dev myself: if time in your application’s internals jumps on DST, something has been implemented incorrectly. That’s what zone information is for, to make times uniquely identifiable and timers run the correct length. Getting the implementation right is hard, though. So, abolishing DST is very well worth it.
I know, but many of our colleagues don’t. I’ve seen so many systems storing and processing their local wall clock time it’s not even funny.
Not sure what programmers have to say about this though.
DST is a major pain in the butt, getting rid of it simplifies a lot of things. Only problem is that everything still needs to take DST into account for all of history.
Last push ended because of COVID. What’s it going to be this time, Bird Flu or Texan Measels?
I we were in true democracies that thing would have been scrapped long ago. Not a single person like it or see any actual purpose on it.
We want to stay in summer time though, right? Right?
We need to reach a consensus on that across EU. Allow for a few decades, then we can make an informed decision and start to plan how to proceed.
Either, just as long as we stop the switch twice a year
Actually I quite like it. You get daylight in the morning in winter, and longer evenings in the summer.
Without DST you have to choose between: in winter you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, meaning you don’t see any daylight apart from at weekends, which is especially depressing if you work in a place short on windows; OR you waste a bunch of daylight in the summer mornings and have shorter evenings when the weather is warmer and it’s nicer to be outside.
I am a programmer. Not sure why this would be a problem. Just fix the computers to GMT+X and for the most part it won’t matter. It’s not as if I have to rewrite DST code every few months.
in winter you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, meaning you don’t see any daylight apart from at weekends,
That’s already my reality as it stands
Nordic detected
The issue is more with embedded systems which have been hard coded to European DST.
Most sane software will use the OS timezone and not care about DST. Most sane embedded systems will have some config for DST. I bet there are lots of cranky unsupported things which are horribly broken though.
Living in eastern Japan for a decade, I don’t miss changing the clocks and the misery around that time. I do wish east Japan would move by an hour, though; before 4am sunrises (getting light from 3-something) and dark before 5pm in the winter sucks.
Let’s hope they keep the summer time
Edit: I meant all year round. I hate that it gets dark so soon in the winter
Why? You do realize, the summer time is the offset from the real timezone? And also it does not change the amount of hours we have in a day. It is still 24h :D
I’m well aware, but I prefer more light in the afternoon than in the early morning.
Having the middle of the day at 1 PM is nicer year-round
No it’s not. DST makes it so summer afternoons and evenings are useless because it’s too hot in the direct sunlight. By the time the sun goes down and you can actually be outside it’s time for bed.
We should move the clock a hour back in summer so we can actually enjoy the summer evenings.
you do realize you can simply wake up earlier and it’ll have the same effect? :D
Edit: I see a couple of downvotes. Could some one give some arguments?
Why not every country can decide what time they want to keep?
I believe this was the original EU plan. Scrap it, countries decide which timezone they want to stick with.
I call bullshit. they’ve gotten rid of daylight savings and the 12-hour clock in most of Asia, but it’ll never happen in Europe. democracy doesn’t work like that. bullshit
Seems like EU members are currently mostly split on whether to keep summer time or the other the default (so the current system will stay)
I had such high hopes back in 2018, I think France was pushing for it. Now 7 years later with still no progress I think the best bet is to move to China, India, Russia or Hawaii, or any African country except Egypt. Or South America except Chile. You see the overwhelming majority of people in the world don’t have the DST bullshit.
India? You mean the “+05:30” timezone? I’d rather not deal with that :30 tbh. I like having my timezone arithmetics quite simple, just adding and subtracting hours. A half hour offset is worse to me than having to switch which offsets to use when. (Still better than Australia Central Western with its +08:45, but that’s a low bar to clear.)
YES! LET’S GO!
Really don’t get the issue about keeping it? Its just a small adaptation, which should not bother anyone? A simple change every now and then keeps you flexible right, just go with the flow, and stop being bothered about such a small thing 😉
“Small”? It’s literally changing the time, one of the most significant variables in our lives.
I spent months coding this shit into our programs and it still has issues. It makes it impossible to handle time without ambiguities.
Its annoying and easy to forget and ruins atleast 2 days a year. T. The one with 3 hour daylight in winter for whom dst was made for.
Move the clock an hour back in summer instead.
You like going home from work in the dark?
Yes
Dark? It doesn’t get dark in summer at the end of the workday, even if you move the clock backwards.
What I do like in summer is being outside, which isn’t possible until after sundown because you’ll burn alive if you do. It doesn’t get comfortable outdoors until after the sun sets which in the middle of summer isn’t until 22:00, thanks to DST.
I’d like to BBQ, eat outdoors, have a few drinks with friends in my garden. All impossible during weekdays because there is not enough time after sunset before I need to go to bed.