Normally the change from standard time to daylight savings time (DST) only affects me in that I wake up an hour later than normal. However this year the date for daylight savings time will change in the USA from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March and end the first Sunday in November. Unlike Y2K which was warned about for years the change in DST has been widely forgotten. Some say there is the same potential for disruption of banking and billing with the change in DST that there was with Y2K seven years ago. For certain any software that depends on older versions of JRE can fail.

 

I’m not a doomsayer. I don’t think there is a great chance of a problem with the change of daylight savings time. However, there is always a chance of problems whenever there is a change in time, I see it when I travel or share papers with someone in another time zone. What about the time stamps on your code, will they suddenly have a fit and force rebuilds on all of your projects. What about the code itself, is it time relative, did you consider the time zone not being standard or changing. Will it change once when the operators change to DST and then again the first week of April? What about other nations will some follow the United States or will they remain the first week in April? We need to take all of this into consideration now a month ahead of time so we are prepared when the time arrives. If you do nothing else, be sure you are running the latest JRE.

 

For more information you might want to see the Computerworld article by Todd Weiss.

 

Ron