Time durations

Canonical guidance

• use constants like 500 * time.Millisecond
• parse human-entered durations with time.ParseDuration
• be explicit at boundaries where config uses integers

Use when

• timeouts and retries
• intervals and backoff
• config parsing

Avoid

• time.Duration(5) when you mean seconds
• ambiguous integer config without documented units
• scattering ad hoc conversion logic

Preferred pattern

client := &http.Client{
	Timeout: 5 * time.Second,
}

Anti-pattern

• reading 5 from config and turning it into time.Duration(5) without multiplying by a unit

Explanation: This anti-pattern is tempting because time.Duration is an integer type, but its default unit is nanoseconds, not whatever the reader hoped.

Why

• time bugs often look fine in code review until they fail under real timing