Ask HN: How is it that programmers can simply ignore leap seconds?
15 by sporkle-feet | 10 comments on Hacker News.
I am an professional software developer, and have occasionally needed to work with dates and times, including applications that require a certain level of accuracy (e.g. processing pricing feeds from financial institutions) Since 1970, there have been 27 leap seconds applied. But these don't show up anywhere in any computer system I have ever used (OS, languages, applications, third party APIs). If I create a date object of 1970-01-01T00:00:00 and repeatedly add 86400 seconds, should I not end up with a date/time that is no longer midnight? I assume that we are collectively just ignoring leap seconds and hoping for the best. Is this OK?