Pythonic Y2K

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 8:47 AM DL Neil <PythonList at danceswithmice.info> wrote:
>
> On 17/01/19 6:53 PM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 3:55 PM Avi Gross <avigross at verizon.net> wrote:
> >> The forthcoming UNIX 2038 problem will, paradoxically happen on January 19.
> >>
> >
> > Paradoxically? What do you mean by that?
>
>
> First we had to duck the Y2K problem.
> By moving everything to 64-bits, we duck the Unix Millennium problem.
>
> There you go: two ducks - a pair-o-ducks!

Well, I'm sorry Neil, but these things are well documented.

In fact, you can find information on the web, OR you can examine the
man pages in your local installation.

Wait, we're right back where we started... a pair-o-docs....

> I assume the paradox involves noting that the end of the (32-bit) Unix
> epoch, does not coincide with the end of a (Gregorian) calendar year.

Ahh yes, as paradoxical as when the Mayan Y2K happened in December of
2012. Gotcha.

> Actually, aren't there three date-time problems to be ducked? Wasn't
> Python's move to having wider timestamps (+= fractions of seconds) in
> part connected with the need to modify NTP - which hits the wall a few
> years before 2038...

Oh, probably. But one of the reasons I use high level languages is so
I don't have to worry about the sizes of integers. In fact, some day,
we won't use floats to store seconds, we'll just use bignum integers
to store some number of Planck times....

ChrisA