[Python-Dev] Status on PEP-431 Timezones

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 8:32 AM, Alexander Belopolsky
<alexander.belopolsky at gmail.com> wrote:
> A "named offset" is an abbreviation such as UTC, EST, MSK, MSD which (at any
> given time)
> corresponds to a fixed offset from UTC.

That assumes the abbreviations are unique. They're not. Just this
morning I had to explain to a new student of mine that no, my time
zone is not "EST" = New York time, it's actually "EST" = Melbourne
time. Granted, most of the time New York and Melbourne are opposite on
DST, so one will be EST and one EDT, but that trick won't always help
you.

(BTW, thanks Lennart for your "Blame it on Caesar" PyCon talk. I
linked my student to it as a "for further information" resource. Good
fun, and a great summary of why political time is such a minefield.)

If this proposal goes through, in some form or another, will there be
One Obvious Way to do timezone-aware calculations in Python? That
would definitely be an improvement.

ChrisA