[scruple]

Isn't that more likely to be an artifact of some framework or library? I have a less than zero interest in creating or maintaining any list of timezones myself, I can tell you that. Besides, if I'm not mistaken, Rails, for instance, is using TZInfo underneath, which is an IANA timezone database. I have to imagine that any other self-respecting web framework is going to also provide things like this out of the box.

[greggyb]

Sure. It probably is. I'm not sure what the point is.

It's still something that I see on a regular basis, and it seems clear that I care more about it than others, because in my experience I talk about it more than others.

But the frameworks are not using standard IANA time zone names. Those look like "America/New_York".

The most recent time zone selection I made was installing OpenBSD on a new laptop yesterday. That had me choose a proper time zone name.

As best I can read your post you're implying that I am impugning the character of developers of applications I use. I have already noted very clearly that I think I just notice/care about this more.

You've also appealed to a couple sources of authority (framework maintainers and IANA). If I wanted to impugn the characters of those developers, I think I'd have good standing, as your authorities agree with me on proper time zone names. I don't want to do this, though. I don't think it's a big deal, because, as I've already mentioned, human communication offers much affordance for this type of technical incorrectness. I'm not confused. I doubt others are confused. I'm not frustrated. It just tickles the pedantic annoyance lever in my brain.

Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database

Tzinfo (note default examples using strings like I mentioned above): https://github.com/tzinfo/tzinfo/blob/master/README.md#examp...

[scruple]

> I'm not sure what the point is.

Believe me, I'm having the same reaction right now.

> The most recent time zone selection I made was installing OpenBSD on a new laptop yesterday. That had me choose a proper time zone name.

If you don't understand the difference between you selecting "America/Los_Angeles" in an OpenBSD installation and the average user being confronted with a list of country/city names vs. a timezone name and offset then I feel sorry for your users.

[greggyb]

Luckily, I get to avoid building time zone UIs in my day job.

If I were to put it in a UI, I'd try to have locally understandable time zones as the labels, without incorrect offsets. I'd also probably try to give a better than a drop down selection of multiple dozens of options. I might not succeed, in which case I'd fall back to some lowest common denominator based on a survey of popular services. In any event, I agree with you that it is not a high priority for me, and would not be in any app I might develop.