My original intention in reading this book was to see if it’s straightforward to build a shcal(1) UNIX utility, which would be the Solar Hijri version of cal(1) (link to specs) POSIX-standardized utility. It is 10 days past Nowruz so I can still make it seasonal.
However I found this book itself is very entertaining. It is not aimed at just programmers, it can be used by people of all trades. It has a nice ‘aesthetic’. Like a 13 year old American girl addicted to TikTok would give it a ‘Scholar Core’ label. It is still a reference book, but their reference sections is clean and thorough.
I highly recommend giving it a read. It explains calendars from like a billion years ago. These are truly men of letters writing these, so let’s call it ‘Letters Core’!
Funny you would post about such an obscure subject now. I was just checking that book out a couple of days ago, probably because of a reference from the tz database or Joda Time. In my spare time I’m working on a library for calendar calculations so this might just be the push I needed to order that book.
Definitely do. Or just pirate it, it does not matter. I pretty much doubt a cent of what you spend on that print or e-print will be given to any of the authors. Mostly likely, they have been paid beforehand, or were just so passionate on the subject, they did it pro-bono. The publisher is not one of those bougie ‘boutique’ publishers like No Starch Press, it’s freaking Cambridge Press, they can take the loss.
I do often buy books from the aforementioned ‘bougie’ and ‘boutique’ pub houses (mind the ASCII 32) and that’s hard on me because I am cut off from international banking system and have to do it through a courier. But it’s still worth it. Like ‘Crafting an Interpreter’ is a book I would spend money on. Or any of 'Pragmatic Bookshelf’s books, they are great. But don’t waste your money on this.
I realize reading PDFs could be problematic on e-readers, so I will post a guide about making it easier. Check out my post history some time from now.
Thanks.
Born too late to have to fix the Y2K problem, born too soon to have to consider Mars’ time zones in the database, born just in time to have most time zone problems solved before I even got involved
Mars sucks ass I hope we never go there. There are plenty of other decent celestial bodies around. We should colonize Moon for starters. Moon colony would be amazing.
Native Martians have their own concept of time; just like a typical white male CIS-gendered anglo-saxon Germanic Indo-European Westerner to assume they will be welcoming of your concept of ‘time’. But this is a good thought experiment; when, or if, and I don’t really care if it’s either ‘if’ or ‘when’, subhuman scum that is the homosapiens goes to another planet to jerk off there, just as God cast us from Eden unto earth, what would be the temporal and calenderial considerations? I guess the current spacemen have something worked out?
This book says there are two types of calendars. Those arithmetic, and those astronomical. Calendars could be both. For example, this book mentions the Astronomical Persian calendar, but there’s also an arithmetic one. Arithmetic calendars are based on numbers, astronomical ones are based on stars.
I guess humans, on other planets, would have this eternal sense of ‘jetlag’ or ‘rocketlag’ in this case, which would mean all types of astronomical calendars would be out of question. Our scum ape bodies has adapted to this distance from this star we call ‘the Sun’ (which I believe earns its name from the great mythological figures, ‘Which a Chance of Meatballs’) so an arithmetic calendar will probably used in Mars.
Now I just read this book, and half-assedly, so I am not commentarian on the matter of calendars, so maybe it will turn out that on Mars, an astronomical calendar would work best?
I shan’t see, as I hopefully be dead by that time.
I was just commenting on the fact that programming to handle time zone conversions (and daylight savings time) is difficult enough without having to factor planetary orbit into the equation. Colonization aside, even if we found native martians had a calendar they were “currently” using, writing a program to convert from any Earth calendar time to native Martian calendar time would be an astronomical pain in the ass.
Sounds like you might have a lot of hatred in you. I hope you’re going to therapy. I am for that exact reason.