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by vhanda 1195 days ago
Mate, I'm very confused.

The first result in Google [1] which I often use, lets me paste a unix timestamp in seconds, milliseconds or nano seconds, and it accordingly converts it to a Human readable string.

Is that not the feature you built this for?

[1] - https://www.epochconverter.com/

2 comments

Take the timestamp "1677951565000123456" for example - If I put it into the link you posted, it just gives me "Saturday, March 4, 2023 11:39:25 AM". While it's a minor drawback, it requires another step to figure out the microsecond and nansecond part of the timestamp since it's not in the output. My website would display "Saturday March 3 2023 11:39:25.000,123,456 AM -06:00 (nanos)", which gives you "000,123,456" telling you the milli,micro,nano breakdown of the timestamp
> Take the timestamp "1677951565000123456" for example - If I put it into the link you posted, it just gives me "Saturday, March 4, 2023 11:39:25 AM"

It looks like it only gives millisecond resolution in the output, and only displays milliseconds if there is at least 1 millisecond. Give it 1677951565020123456 and then you will get 11:39:25.020.

Exactly. I've been using epoch converter for years. It's the first thing that comes up in search results too.

How did this reach the front page?

As someone involved in a lot of hiring, it's very common especially for junior developers (which OP appears to be) to pad their resumes with many toy web apps that effectively wrap or replicate simple Unix tools. I have noticed this trend a lot in the last year or two. It does give those applicants a leg up for sure, especially in this market, but do only take these projects at face value.
At the same time, we celebrate rewriting small Unix tools in Rust. How is that different?

You shouldn't view someone building a toy project in a negative light, even if it's for learning purposes. It demonstrates curiosity and interest in learning, and is part of what being a hacker is all about.

Maybe it's not frontpage worthy for this crowd, but it's certainly worth mentioning in a CV, especially for junior engineers. It can serve as a good topic of discussion during the interview, for example.

See my other response to the parent for the reason I felt there was room to improve on the existing websites. Are there any other features you would find useful in a timestamp converter?