Python's history of time types was terrible, as well. Particularly the era when we just used tuples of length 8 or 9 that weren't timezone aware.
Boy do we disagree. Between the mutable API, the fuzzy parsing, the lack of tz support and the yet-another-reinvention of date/time formatting DSL[0] moment was one of those things I'd rather have not had in my life.
[0] which, to add insult to injury, is really similar to but not quite compatible with the LDML's
When did you last use it? I love working with momentjs.
Yes, relatively recent options or completely separate projects allow doing these things. Do you know what happens to options when the default behaviour looks like it works? They don't get used, and the original garbage remains.
> I love working with momentjs.
And as I wrote earlier, boy do we disagree.
In the case of Moment, a little promotion went a very long way, and the community was eager to take what's given so they wouldn't have to think too much about datetime, and focus on debating how to arrange and design their applications instead.
Moment's design is a testament to "let's not think too hard about datetime", and I mean that both as a compliment and a critique.
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/users/272034/timrwood?tab=summary [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12175369
It's hard because the expected output is not fully agreed about.
We don't know what we want, and we don't know how to get it. That goes for pretty much every programming language I know of.
It's a hard problem because we suck, as people.