The end of the world is nigh

According to Ruby, the world ends (or, at least, is reconfigured) on Tuesday the 19th of January 2038 at 7 seconds past 3.14am.

>> Time.utc(2038, 1, 19, 3, 14, 7, 999999)
=> Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 UTC 2038
>> Time.utc(2038, 1, 19, 3, 14, 7, 999999).succ
=> Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 UTC 1901

This is an artefact of representing time as an integer counting from the epoch, but given that a Fixnum will automatically roll over into a Bignum when it reaches 2**30, it's somewhat surprising that a similar transformation isn't performed internally in Time to allow us to represent dates and times beyond 2038-01-19.

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About the boy

A picture of Craig in grayscale

Craig Webster is a software engineer living in London. He usually works with Ruby although sometimes he sneaks in some Erlang or JavaScript. He's into rock climbing, snowboarding, skating, photography and fencing. Yes, this does mean he has a sword.

Near here you'll find Craig's homepage, contact details, PGP key and keysigning policy, and talks.

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