Key takeaways

• Caveats and deficiencies of commonly used time representations
• Useful timely tools and practices

This talk breaks the mould to take a hard look at one of the most commonly used, and at least as commonly misunderstood, elements in software engineering: time. Time is so fundamental to the way humans experience reality that we don't normally give it a second thought, but it's just as fundamental to software systems. Without a correct model for working with time BAD THINGS HAPPEN: data is persisted out of order, exceptions occur where they shouldn't be possible, and production systems blow up. We'll cover the various common representations of time, acknowledge their caveats and deficiencies, and hopefully learn a few new tools and practices along the way.