CodeFaster

CodeFaster

Don't serialize unix timestamps

Tyler Adams's avatar
Tyler Adams
Dec 19, 2023
∙ Paid
4
Share

I was recently reading an API guide and came across this funny example:

What’s funny is that as a human, I have no idea when 1607450357 is. I’m just not that good at math. Unix timestamps are not legible to people which makes debugging slower. Instead, one should always serialize dates as ISO8601, so that the created date is:

2020-12-08T17:59:17Z

which is immediately readable to people, just as precise and unambiguous, faster to debug, and faster to code.

This post is for paid subscribers

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Tyler Adams
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture