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> Why not epoch? An integer always means epoch. A human readable timestamp, unless it's exactly ISO8601, is pretty much always ambiguous.

Because in practice, the only ubiquitous APIs for getting time since an epoch don't actually model an elapsed time standard. The odd one out is POSIX time.

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In theory or in practice, where can you not get POSIX time?

(aside from devices with no RTC or for other reasons can't keep any time at all)

POSIX time isn't quite an elapsed time standard, thanks to the absence of leap seconds.

Wall clock time should never be used to measure time when these seconds matter. Like I said in grandparent comment:

> for time measurements you should always use a monotonic clock, not wall clock.

POSIX time isn't a time elapsed standard. Yes. But neither is iso8601, timestamp+timezone, everyday speak time "tomorrow at noon", or any of these other options.

So I'm not sure what your point is, other than to say that a hammer is not a screwdriver.

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