I know it's a joke, but it's lazy programming/lazy thoughts like this that caused the issues with the systems in the first place :)
Although I still don't fully understand why leap seconds caused such a problem - we can handle leap years and we can handle daylight savings, surely this is just another clock correction action such as these?
The problem with programming for a leap second is you don't know when a leap second will occur. Compare this to a leap year, which happen every 4 years, always. Leap seconds are sporadic [1]. Programming a clock to accept the time of 11:59:60 only on occasion is trivial in a web app, but slightly more complex in a firmware or high-reliability system like flight controls.
Although I still don't fully understand why leap seconds caused such a problem - we can handle leap years and we can handle daylight savings, surely this is just another clock correction action such as these?