GMT to IST: The server log nightmare

If you don't store your database timestamps in UTC, you shouldn't be programming. I don't care what your excuse is.

Every single time a junior dev decides to save a user's action in local IST time, a senior dev loses a year of their life.

Let say a transaction happens at 2:00 PM IST. You write 14:00 to the database. Awesome. Six months later, the company expands to London. Now you have transactions happening in GMT. Now your database has IST timestamps mixing with GMT timestamps and nobody knows which transaction actually happened first. It's a bloodbath.

So the problem is you always convert everything to GMT. Always.

But then you have to read the logs. You see an error spiked at 11:15 AM GMT. Your brain has to instantly do the math. Add 5.5 hours. Okay, 11 + 5 is 16. Plus 30 minutes. That's 16:45. So 4:45 PM IST.

You're a developer. You're supposed to be solving complex logic, but instead, you're sitting there counting on your fingers trying to figure out if the server crashed before or after you took your tea break.

Just use a converter tool. Don't be a hero.