I was going through the release notes of the new Python 3.12 version the other day, and one item caught my attention in the deprecations section:datetime.datetime’s utcnow() and utcfromtimestamp()…
Yeah, the names imply that those should be TZ aware. Though I can understand the reasoning, as this change can silently break already broken code that kind of works, and would be a nightmare to fix in a large codebase.
I also disagree with author, about naive datetime. I don’t think there is a good use case for them, and people who use them, do so because they are not aware of the issues.
The only argument I saw was for micro performance improvements, which is kind of funny to care about when programming in python. Since it is implemented in C, the code removing the timezone likely takes more resources.
While it would be ideal to have all datetime fields in databases and other data stores be time zone aware, that is certainly not the case. Also, SQLite (and probably others) do not have great support for time zones and it’s recommended to store datetimes as UTC (typically unix timestamps).
Deprecating utcnow was a good idea, but they should have replaced it with naive_utcnow. Oh well.
@Sigmatics you can have everyone on the same time zone and still have different day/night cycles. It just means you have to get up at 14:00 and go to sleep at 5:00. The big problem with this is that the date-switch happens for everyone at the same time, which means you might have breakfast on Thursday and lunch on Friday. That makes it terribly inconvenient, and therefore probably unviable.
@Sigmatics Habits can be unlearned over a few generations. Doesn’t mean in becomes practical all if a sudden. It’s just messy to say “I’ll do this tomorrow” when “tomorrow” might mean “before I go to bed”.
“See you Monday!”
“Eh, before or after sleep on Monday?”
It’s just not viable. It requires us to think differently about what a date is, returning the original issue: different people living at different dates.
The only use I can see for naive date times is you just read the date out of an old sql database, but it shouldn’t leave the function naive, it should be converted first.
Python’s timezone handling is probably my only complaint about the language. I shouldn’t need to use libraries just to have timezones.
Yeah, the names imply that those should be TZ aware. Though I can understand the reasoning, as this change can silently break already broken code that kind of works, and would be a nightmare to fix in a large codebase.
I also disagree with author, about naive datetime. I don’t think there is a good use case for them, and people who use them, do so because they are not aware of the issues.
The only argument I saw was for micro performance improvements, which is kind of funny to care about when programming in python. Since it is implemented in C, the code removing the timezone likely takes more resources.
While it would be ideal to have all datetime fields in databases and other data stores be time zone aware, that is certainly not the case. Also, SQLite (and probably others) do not have great support for time zones and it’s recommended to store datetimes as UTC (typically unix timestamps).
Deprecating
utcnowwas a good idea, but they should have replaced it withnaive_utcnow. Oh well.Timezones are a disease and should be eradicated. I will die on this hill.
Agreed. I’m an American and wish we could just all be on UTC. Yeah, my workday would start at like 0200, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Everyone on UTC sounds like such a great idea that would solve so many problems.
Unfortunately humans are so dependent on daylight and the day night cycle that it will never work
@Sigmatics you can have everyone on the same time zone and still have different day/night cycles. It just means you have to get up at 14:00 and go to sleep at 5:00. The big problem with this is that the date-switch happens for everyone at the same time, which means you might have breakfast on Thursday and lunch on Friday. That makes it terribly inconvenient, and therefore probably unviable.
Yeah that’s kind of what I meant. People like their days to start at the same time every day. We are creatures of habit.
@Sigmatics Habits can be unlearned over a few generations. Doesn’t mean in becomes practical all if a sudden. It’s just messy to say “I’ll do this tomorrow” when “tomorrow” might mean “before I go to bed”.
“See you Monday!”
“Eh, before or after sleep on Monday?”
It’s just not viable. It requires us to think differently about what a date is, returning the original issue: different people living at different dates.
I agree. I hate timezones so much
@BeardedGingerWonder will you adapt your time to be 7 hours later?
Thought so.
You thought what?
I agree.
The only use I can see for naive date times is you just read the date out of an old sql database, but it shouldn’t leave the function naive, it should be converted first.
Python’s timezone handling is probably my only complaint about the language. I shouldn’t need to use libraries just to have timezones.