An easy way to think about timestamps vs. time strings is that one is machine-readable and the other is human-readable. Computers work best with simple numeric representations, like how they ultimately process everything as 0s and 1s. A timestamp is like that: a clean, efficient number that a program can store, sort and calculate with.
But humans require context, words, formatting and images to understand the world. That’s where time strings come in. Converting a timestamp into a readable date and time transforms machine code into something…