title: Time accuracy in programming, applications and operating systems
body: <p>This isn't strictly a homework question, but an offshoot.</p>
  
  <p>How are time functions implemented in object oriented languages and also imperative languages like C? If you were to obtain a timestamp in nanoseconds as a long and convert it to a string, wouldn't the time always be inaccurate?</p>
  
  <p>In fact, as soon as you do any computation or work with the timing data, isn't it now inaccurate to some unknown degree? Is this assumption correct?</p>
  
  <p>You can account for network latency pretty easily, but what about locally before the data is even sent? It seems that everyone asked so far has come to the conclusion that time functions are never completely accurate - it's just an accepted inaccuracy.</p>
  
  <p>Essentially, what I'm asking is how are real-world time applications implemented?</p>