To use an Epoch you have to convert it into a timezone aware date (as you stated, as late as possible). Now that could be UTC but more likley it will be a timeZone that observes a daylight savings time.
Consider the epoch of 0, 1st of Jan 1970 or what ever it is. Well that's correct in GMT but if you are in NYC what time is it, how about Singapore, Australia, Huston etc...
I think it's best to make an explicit, type-level distinction between these things. JodaTime does this: you can have an Instant (which represents a point in time) or a DateTime (a human-readable date/time with a timezone), and if you try to pass one where the other is needed then you get a compile error.
Comments
I agree but this is only half the battle.
To use an Epoch you have to convert it into a timezone aware date (as you stated, as late as possible). Now that could be UTC but more likley it will be a timeZone that observes a daylight savings time.
Consider the epoch of 0, 1st of Jan 1970 or what ever it is. Well that's correct in GMT but if you are in NYC what time is it, how about Singapore, Australia, Huston etc...
I think it's best to make an explicit, type-level distinction between these things. JodaTime does this: you can have an Instant (which represents a point in time) or a DateTime (a human-readable date/time with a timezone), and if you try to pass one where the other is needed then you get a compile error.