[Python-Dev] dateutil (original) (raw)

Gareth McCaughan gmccaughan at synaptics-uk.com
Fri Mar 12 04:22:10 EST 2004

On Friday 2004-03-12 08:29, Brett C. wrote:

[Gustavo:]

> * Computing of Easter Sunday dates for any given year, > using Western, Orthodox or Julian algorithms;

[Brett:]

Don't really see the use in this other than the rule figuring this out is odd enough that I never remember. Who really cares when Easter is beyond certain religious groups?

People living in countries where some public holidays are relative to Easter. (For instance, in the UK there's a "bank holiday" on Good Friday, defined as the Friday immediately preceding Easter Sunday.) People who like some of the (not particularly religious) traditions that have become attached to Easter and to related dates. (For instance, I know some very outspoken atheists who hold a party every year on Shrove Tuesday and, in accordance with tradition, serve pancakes.)

Anyway, the "certain religious groups" you mention include something like 1/5 of the world's population, and probably at least 5% of the Python userbase. There are probably as many Python users who care about the date of Easter as there are who care about Enigma-like encryption or reading IFF chunked data or using QuickTime on a Macintosh.

-- g

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