The Pearls and Pitfalls of DateTime
summary
Explains concrete failures: Java’s odd constructors like new Date(0) != new Date() and epoch defaults that encode sentinel values; formatting traps (lowercase m = minutes, lenient parsing silently shifts fields); a real interoperability bug where Java vs Python microsecond loss causes lossy round trips; timezone database drift across machines (multiple tzdb releases per year) that breaks logs from Antarctic stations; recommends persisting UTC timestamp plus offset and save UTC plus tzdb version so historical events remain reproducible for forensics.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction and disclaimers
- 4:04Java date quirks
- 7:23Understanding epochs
- 10:05Date formatting pitfalls
- 16:17The reality of software
- 18:54Time zones in practice
- 22:43Time zone database dynamics
- 28:33Silver bullets and UTC
- 32:49Digital forensics applications
- 35:11Binary formats and closing
- 37:00Q&A and conclusion
