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Adobe and Apple Didn't Unit Test For "Forward Date" Bugs. Do You?

Posted by timothy on from the everyone-misses-a-few dept.

llamafirst writes "As the year flipped to 2013, we learned that Adobe and Apple don't test for "forward date" bugs. Adobe prevented any copy of FrameMaker 10 from launching and Apple broke Do Not Disturb for the first week of 2013. Surely some more critical and safety systems also have lurking issues. Got tips for catching time/date bugs 'from the mysterious future?' (Also, obligatory link to Falsehoods programmers believe about time.)"

4 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. leap year by d3matt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    2012 cost us a decent chunk of change because for the third product line in a row, we screwed up seconds since epoch calculations... Every single customer was out of commission until we released a patch!

    --
    I am d3matt
    1. Re:leap year by egranlund · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah, I don't entirely understand why apple is having such a rough time getting basic time keeping and scheduling working...

  2. Why? by gr8_phk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Got tips for catching time/date bugs "from the mysterious future"?

    Why does software functionality depend on the date? Calculation issues maybe... but failure to lauch? WTF? I'm most curious to learn how this even happens.

  3. I've had the opposite experience.... by Zapotek · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...with forward dates braking my tests.
    I've had mock SSL certs and HTTP cookie jars that both expired and made it seem like the system was failing all over the place during unit/integration/general testing.

    So just watch out in general because this can swing either way...