Time is a Social Construct
Daniel Cousineau at JSConf US 2019
Did you know that one of the most headache-inducing problems a programmer will face in their career has only existed for barely 130 years? Time as we know it legitimately is a social construct, invented so we can do everything from predicting where a train is to scheduling a hangout with your international office coworkers. Together we'll take a wacky adventure through history to learn why timezones are so confusing, why daylight savings time can feel like a form of torture, and why "just use UTC for everything" isn't necessarily the best idea. And while we're not going to walk away with a silver bullet answer to fix all our time problems, we will leave understanding the historical context behind the answer to why your automated emails went out a day early.