Re: Ada, calendar, and daylight savings

[Corey Minyard <minyard@acm.org>]

I won't argue about the goofiness of our time system, since I can't do 
anything about that :-).

Hopefully, missiles in flight are using UTC.  It makes no sense to use 
anything else.  However, you have no portable way of finding UTC in Ada. 
If not a design error, I would consider that a good candidate for future 
enhancement.

-Corey

tmoran@acm.org wrote:

>>The "Time" type in Ada.Calendar is fundamentally a poor design.  The
>>only reasonable use of Calendar in Ada is for inexact, convenient
>>"match the wall clock" use.
>>
>   The only reason Ada.Calendar.Clock would not normally be monotonic
> is if some human decides so.  A missile during flight does not
> normally worry about time zones.  If someone creates a file, then
> sets back the clock and creates another file (or programs his
> computer to set back the clock), that's hardly a design error
> in Ada.  It would make more sense to call it a design error that
> wall clocks don't read in UTC, but need to be adjusted when you
> move, or twice a year even if you don't move.  Now *that's* goofy.
>