
Why MySQL’s DATETIME can and should be avoided - zeeone
http://billauer.co.il/blog/2009/03/mysql-datetime-epoch-unix-time/
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skurry
Right, stop using those "complicated" built-in date processing functions and
instead roll your own. What could possibly go wrong? Storing a number that's
only meaningful when defining it somewhere outside of the database is much
more fun! Finally you get to meet all your co-workers in person, at least all
the junior developers who will stop by your desk to ask why there are these
weird numbers in the date columns.

~~~
zeeone
A junior developer who doesn't know about epoch time should not be given any
tasks other than "bring more tea" and "go pickup the chinese food order".

Also, let me see your "complicated" built-in date processing functions convert
a date from Gregorian calendar to Julian or Mayan. You'll always come down to
using your own tools.

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politician
tldr: In this article from 2009, consider storing UTC plus the local timezone
instead of the local server time when building applications that have users in
multiple timezones. Use a time or a time offset as appropriate to capture a
point in time (e.g. a birthday) or a timespan (e.g. the number of seconds this
thing ran), resp.

