Real "Root of the problem"
A more general problem with programmers is they use "clock time" as a substitute for "order of events".
This works well if all events are being recorded with consistent time stamps, say for conditional compilation on a local machine where you can check if the .o file in one location is older then your .c file in another, or when you pressed the "build" button in the GUI, etc.
Things break due to time faults: such as the same conditional process on a network file system where the time stamp of some files is due to the servers' clock, and others locally are from the client's clock which is different, or the file system's time resolution (e.g. 2 seconds on FAT32 as a worst case) is now greater than the interval between steps, etc.
Then we get in to all sorts of debates abut keeping leap seconds to work around dumb programming. But really what the programmers & software architects should be asking is down to the ACID database situation - how do you guarantee correct order of events in a process if the local clocks are not fully in sync?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
