Time Glossary

Browse 6 time terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

6 Time Terms

Calendar
A structured representation or interface for dates, events, schedules, and time-based interactions. In software development, calendars often involve recurring...
Clock
A source of time used by software for timestamps, scheduling, timeouts, ordering, and measurement. Clocks can represent wall time, monotonic time, or mocked...
Clock Synchronization
The process of keeping clocks on different systems aligned closely enough that timestamps, token validity, scheduling, and ordering assumptions continue to...
Mock the Clock
To replace real time with controlled test time so time-dependent logic becomes predictable and testable. In engineering slang, mocking the clock is one of the...
Timestamp
A value representing a specific point in time, typically stored as seconds or milliseconds since the Unix epoch (January 1, 1970 UTC) or as an ISO 8601 string...
Time Zone Handling
One of the hardest problems in programming. Rules: store all timestamps in UTC, convert to local time only for display. Use IANA timezone names...

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