Y2K cost $300–600 billion to mitigate. The Unix 2038 problem will overflow signed 32-bit timestamps on 19 January 2038. Excel has counted 29 February 1900 as a real date since the 1980s. Here's the structural causes of each date bug and which ones are still ticking.
"06/07/2024" means different dates in the US and UK. ISO 8601 solves this unambiguously. Here's the standard, common date handling mistakes (adding months with timedelta, DST in date arithmetic), storing UTC in databases, and the MySQL 2038 timestamp problem.
Timezone bugs cause more production incidents than most developers realise. Here's how Unix timestamps actually work, why "store UTC, convert at display" solves the problem, and the specific bugs that catch teams off guard.
Learn what Unix timestamps are, why they're used everywhere in software, how to convert them to human-readable dates, and how to avoid the seconds vs. milliseconds confusion.
