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Why don't the whole planet just use UTC+00:00 / Universal Time without time zones?
(programming.dev)
this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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I see this argument all the time. Forget all the tradition, "people like noon near solar noon", all that.
Date changes mid day some places and not others would be a nightmare for so many things.
What're you doing on the Tuesday half of June 15/16th?
This happens anyway. I literally have meetings every week where it's Tuesday night for everyone else on the meeting, and Wednesday morning for me.
That's different, your day remains Wednesday their day remains Tuesday, they're talking about going to lunch on Tuesday and coming back on Wednesday, do you call that your Tuesday lunch? Tuesday Dinner? Wednesday breakfast? Wednesday lunch?
This also already happens, albeit for fewer people. I used to have a job that started at 7pm. My lunchtime was literally from 23:30 to 00:30 the following day.
I admit I did not like that job very much, but it wasn't anything to do with each work day spanning two dates.
That's not lunch though, it's dinner. It's not about a work day going across the date, it's about the changing of the date happening midway through the day. You wouldn't go to the bank do some stuff during your "lunch" break only to discover you missed the deadline because it went over midnight, or every place you visit has different moments when bills expire, etc, etc. You working a night shift is a completely different scenario, by the time the date crosses over most places that are date sensitive are already closed for the day.
Legal things would be a mess.
Your visa is valid until the end of the month. Halfway through the day?
This sounds like something legitimately terrifying, but I'm struggling to make it concrete. Could you expand on the example a bit?
Take some place currently having UTC+12 time zone, say Marshall Islands. Midnight by UTC, the moment date changes, is exactly noon there. So how should people there talk about time? There is no "Tuesday the 15th of May" there, because every day is one part one date, other part another date
So yeah. For computers and programmers "whole planet lives in UTC" might look like a boon (for a time I myself wished for it), but only until they start facing other, more twisted problems