this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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12 hour time is an inferior standard, and we should be on 24 hour time so developers don't ever default to 12 hour time. Way too many instances of mission critical things getting swapped on am/pm by mistake. That is never a problem with 24h time.
I’ve been trying to move over to 24 hour time. I swear switching from Fahrenheit to Celsius was easier.
I used math tricks at first. But honestly, just switching even one clock like your watch or phone makes it pretty easy over time.
1pm is easy to remember as it's 13, a prime number
7x2 = 14(00)
3x5= 15(00)
4x4 =16(00)
5pm is 17, also a prime.
6x3 = 18(00)
7pm is also a prime, 19(00).
20, 21, 22, 23, and 00 also have math tricks, but you can also just remember that after 8pm, you have less than four hours till midnight :)
I find it easier to just add/subtract 12, the problem is that I sometimes accidentally add/subtract 10.
Yeah, I knew about that trick, but for me, it was easier to just break down 16 into its smaller components. Or remember that 19 was a prime, which belonged to 7. After a bit of time (heh), it all just started to meld for me. Nothing like immersion-based learning!
Really? That’s really surprising to me. I’m from Denmark where we use 24h time a lot so I’m used to it, but except for edge cases it’s easy to switch between them. Using Fahrenheit however is a struggle. I have to convert it every time, I have no idea about the temperature until I see it in celsius really. I guess it comes down to me having been exposed to both clock formats but only really on temperature unit.
Celsius makes more sense for everything but normal to hot temps. 100 being about as hot as is tolerable. 75 being perfect 50 being tolerable cold.
How does that make sense, it's just arbitrary numbers. I can give you arbitrary numbers for celsius too: 30 being hot but tolerable, 20 being perfect, 10 being cold but tolerable.
My guess is I’d do better if every clock I owned was on 24-hour time. That’s how I did the Celsius switch, every device (except my car, which I haven’t been able to figure out how to change) I set to Celsius.
I live in a household that is divided between Celsius (me) and Fahrenheit (wife). I wish I could switch every device, but I have to pick my battles. So I expose myself as much as possible and recite the following
30 is hot 20 is nice 10 is cool 0 is ice
Fortunately my wife is both gracious and adventurous in this regard, and is cool with having most of our stuff on Celsius. I switched before we were married, and she’s slowly learning by virtue of everything being on Celsius except her phone.
Edit: Also, this may be helpful, I came up with a heuristic early on to approximate Fahrenheit values to help me learn.
I memorized every 10 (and eventually every 5) and then approached from the nearest memorized point using 2°F per 1°C instead of 1.8.
For example, if something said 22°C, I’d start at 20°C=68°F and work my way up, adding 4, to get to 72°F. Since the actual value is 71.6°F, that’s close enough.
If you forget a 10 or a 5 it’s easy to recalculate them if you know another, because it’s 9°F per 5°C. So if 20 is 68, and 30 is 86, then 25 is 77.
(Obviously you could also do the full conversion but that takes me more time.)
Ooo I like that. Thanks!
24hr time is based. 1600 > 4PM. Always.