[Python-ideas] Backward-incompatible changes for Python 4

[Jonathan Goble]

On Mon, Apr 1, 2019 at 6:12 PM Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz>
wrote:

> Obviously, removing a whole day from the year will create problems
> keeping the calendar in step with the seasons. To compensate, it
> will be necessary to add approximately 1.25 days worth of leap
> seconds to each year. This works out to about one leap second
> every 5 minutes. If a suitable algorithm is devised for distributing
> these "leap minutes" as evenly as possible over the year, this
> should cause minimal disruption.
>

Far more disruption than you think, because that would result in daylight
at midnight and nighttime at noon for a good chunk of the year. Instead, I
suggest permanently extending February to 29 days instead, with a 30th day
in leap years. This would limit the disruption to a single month (March),
and only by an offset of one day. I never understood what February did
wrong to be disrespected with such a short month anyway. Instead, February
would be equal in length to April most of the time, and every four years
(at least within our lifetimes *cough2100cough*) it would get to gloat over
being longer than April.
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