Member-only story
A Guide to Avoiding Costly Time-Related Errors That Can Turn Your Code into a Pumpkin at Midnight
It’s 2 AM, Do You Know What Time It Is?
I remember the first time daylight saving time (DST) blindsided me in the worst way possible. It was my first year as a junior developer, and I had built this intricate system that tracked order submissions down to the millisecond. Everything was going fine — until that crisp fall evening when the clocks turned back. Our system, which had no idea time could jump backward, duplicated every order placed between 1:00 AM and 2:00 AM, as if customers had suddenly doubled in number. Panic set in. That night, DST wasn’t just “saving” an hour — it was costing us way more in developer hours and customer support.
And here’s the thing: I wasn’t alone. Developers everywhere shudder at the mere mention of daylight saving time. The more you dig into DST, the more you realize it’s an absurdly complicated issue, with bugs lying in wait. And like me, if you aren’t prepared, it can turn into a costly nightmare.
Why DST Messes with Your Code
At its heart, DST is a simple concept: shift the clocks an hour forward in spring and an hour back in fall. But it’s not that easy in code. In…
