----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Adams" <cma@cmadams.net>
Once upon a time, Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick@ianai.net> said:
But time _DOES_ flow. The seconds count 58, 59, 60, 00, 01, … If you can’t keep up, that’s not UTC’s fault.
[ ... ]
Leap second handling code is not well-tested and is an ultimate corner case. There's been debate about abolishing leap seconds; with all the every-day bugs people have to deal with, few people set up a special test environment to handle something that may never happen again (until you get less than six months warning that it'll happen at least once more), and even then, tests tend to focus on what broke before, because it is really hard to test EVERYTHING.
If this particular issue is your beat -- or your avocation -- you really should read both these blog postings, and all their comments; they are nearly comprehensive: http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-abou... and http://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-believe... They are also both funny as hell. To myself be comprehensive, I should point out a companion piece about names: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-na... and there are similar lists for phone numbers, geography, civil addresses and gender, linked from this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11321236 If you write any code that has to interface with the outside world, these are pieces I think you should read at least annually. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274