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by curun1r 3517 days ago
> eschewing AM/PM in favor of a 24-hour clock

Even if we keep AM/PM, we should make it make sense. It should switch when the numbers roll over. Having 11am be followed by 12pm is nonsensical. The fix for this, as any programmer will tell you, is to recognize that 12 is really 0...we've got an off-by-one bug. Midnight should be 0am and noon should be 0pm.
1 comments
nayuki 3517 days ago
Yes, this proposal does make things a lot easier because:

twelveHour = twentyFourHour mod 12

But instead with the status quo, we need to add this extra line of logic:

if twelveHour == 0 then twelveHour = 12

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colejohnson66 3517 days ago
> But instead with the status quo, we need to add this extra line of logic:

> if twelveHour == 0 then twelveHour = 12

That's because humans naturally begin counting from 1, not 0. Mainly because we are counting objects, not adding an array index to a pointer.

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fnj 3516 days ago
Time is not a count. Time is a linear displacement, just like distance. As such, it only makes sense to start with 0. Did you ever see a ruler that starts with "1" at the very end? Of course not. It starts with "0", but they just don't bother to print the "0".

One inch is a displacement of "1" from the beginning. One hour is a displacement of "1" from the beginning. It's pretty stupid to arbitrarily call the beginning "12".

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