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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

So far there are only a few comments here, but I am surprised to see they actually have differing opinions. I always thought everyone universally hated DST, especially programmers, but apparently that's not the case at all.

I personally hate it because I'd rather be on DST year round so I get more sun in the winter afternoons.

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The majority of programmers should never be directly coding to account for DST but instead should be using libraries (JodaTime, moment.js) that abstract local time differences. There are just too many to keep track of. I'm glad I don't have to worry about code I wrote 5 years ago handling the end of DST in Florida.

As an engineer I always use a library, or set up systems on Arizona time so I don't have to deal with it.

But I often had to work with systems/software made by other people who made a lot of assumptions about dates.

Why Arizona time? Isn’t it easier to use UTC?

I live and work in California, so it's way easier in my head to subtract one hour during the few winter months we're on standard time, and then not have to do any math from March to October.

UTC always requires a bunch of mental gymnastics to subtract 7 or 8.

It’s possible for Arizona to start using DST in the future. Indiana used to not observe DST until 10 or 15 years ago.

Even with libraries, DST creates headaches. Just having an hour of ambiguous time (Nov 4, 1:23am 2018 has two possible meanings in most places) means having to write test cases, parse log files differently and there are areas (e.g. database) where you can't use a library and if you're not able to structure your application to store UTC timestamps, you have to account for it yourself.

Libraries are great at abstracting away a lot of the pain, but some of the complexity will always leak through that abstraction.

I don't think programmers hate DST per se. I think they just hate having to write code that has to support the time change in general. If it doesn't change, it's not really different than just keeping it at Standard Time.

Depends on one's lifestyle a lot. When I was younger I could sleep late so I cared much more about the afternoon daylight. However since I've got a kid I now have to get up before 7am every day to handle all the chores - and so I started caring much more about the morning daylight. Honestly nothing more depressing to me than having to go out of my warm bed into a cold and still pitch dark winter morning. It's just a FML kinda thing...

It's funny...I love waking up in darkness. I like to get an hour of meditation in before I start my day and lighting a candle in a dark room makes that easier. I also love sunrises and sunsets, so being awake before sun comes up means I get to see both. There's something about that transitional light, where the sun's angle has to go through more atmosphere, that I find quite magical.

I can see how having responsibilities that need to happen in the morning would keep you from being able to step back and appreciate those more aesthetic enjoyments, but if can figure out how to find moments within those responsibilities when you can appreciate the beauty, perhaps getting up in the pitch dark won't seem so depressing.

I hate DST because I'd rather be on NORMAL time year round. Having to get up in darkness during Winter would be terrible and there's plenty of light during Summer anyways.

Canadians and Alaskans and most Northern Europeans get up in winter darkness.

I suspect it's something you either get used to or move away from.

I live in Norway so I know. Getting up at 9 allows me to just get up at sunset in Winter. If Summer time was enforced in Winter that wouldn't be possible.

This whole "DST the whole year" thing feels like an early riser conspiracy. Summertime essentially means that an hour is stolen from you.

It’s the opposite. DST shifts sunlight one hour by the local clock later in the day.

It’s not limited to programmers but I’m guessing programmers as a group favor shifting light later in the day.

So you don't actually hate DST, you hate switching between the two? I agree: we should stick to DST forever, more sun at night!

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