I’m not sure if I can see your point. Is this a programming thing? I’ve seen this sentiment a couple of times on Lemmy and I don’t get it. For me it’s more logical to state a date the way you speak (I’m no English native speaker, though).
Not just programming. e.g. if you create a bunch of files or folders on your computer and they’re sorted by name, then if you do d/m/y they’ll all be out of order. y/m/d will be in order.
But yeah, for human contexts usually day is more important.
In most cases it’s more important to know the month first than the year. Also who says that in speech? It was 1994 January fourth… it’s wrong and I’ll die on this hill.
Omg pick an endian! I prefer big-endian (year, month, day), since it will naturally sort into chronological order. One might argue that little-endian (day, month, year) has merit in some situations where you want to see the most variable component first. But this mixed up month, day, year order is just confusing nonsense.
It’s not most cases. It’s entirely contextual. Even with your example, the year is significant because that is over 30 years ago, giving the entire statement historical context rather than leaving the recipient wondering if this was recent events. “It was January 4th…” (7 months ago?) “1994” (oh, a long time ago) “when I last saw Nirvana” (oh, obviously this is a historical event).
Had you said you saw them in 1994, the month and especially day are likely irrelevant unless the story involves the weather, association with an event, or your story has something to do with how close to was to the singer’s death. Kurt Cobain died April (“this year?” - someone unfamiliar) 5th (of??) 1994 (oh wow, right by the date you already read in this conversation, providing plenty of context).
It takes all 3 bits of information to make a complete statement. Any single bit can be used alone effectively to convey enough meaning. You could say you saw them in 1994, a few months before his death, and provide plenty of context to convey the meaning. You could say you saw them 1994 (oh wow, how close to his death?) January (3 months prior) 4th (I do not care about the 4th)
Agreed. And at this point people should say all recent years as “twenty-twenty-six”, etc. The few people who still insist on saying “two-thousand and” make me grind my teeth.
I would take it a step further by doing what the Japanese and Chinese languages do and possibly even making their characters for day, month, and year a worldwide symbol to be used for dates. That, or have the world come together to create worldwide usable symbols for all that. Really make sure nobody can be confused because they cannot tell whether it’s a European date or a states date.
YYYY-MM-DD is the only acceptable numeric date format and should be the standard taught in schools.
They said unimportant and inconsequential, both of which do not apply to date formatting.
ISO 8601 ftw
As good as ISO 8601 is its handling of time intervals is atrocious.
OK, I’ll be the one: DD-MM-YYYY is the way to go.
That doesn’t sort well. If you read left to right, you can’t assume year so you have to read it in full, working backwards, to get the full meaning.
Year first means you get more specific while reading. Natural logic and hierarchy in reading direction.
I’m not sure if I can see your point. Is this a programming thing? I’ve seen this sentiment a couple of times on Lemmy and I don’t get it. For me it’s more logical to state a date the way you speak (I’m no English native speaker, though).
Not just programming. e.g. if you create a bunch of files or folders on your computer and they’re sorted by name, then if you do d/m/y they’ll all be out of order. y/m/d will be in order.
But yeah, for human contexts usually day is more important.
Does human context include record-keeping? Quickly sorting and searching (not just with a computer) is very important for that
Personally I’m a fan of MM-YY-DD
I discovered this format on 01-02-03.
…why?
In most cases it’s more important to know the month first than the year. Also who says that in speech? It was 1994 January fourth… it’s wrong and I’ll die on this hill.
RIP
Omg pick an endian! I prefer big-endian (year, month, day), since it will naturally sort into chronological order. One might argue that little-endian (day, month, year) has merit in some situations where you want to see the most variable component first. But this mixed up month, day, year order is just confusing nonsense.
It’s not most cases. It’s entirely contextual. Even with your example, the year is significant because that is over 30 years ago, giving the entire statement historical context rather than leaving the recipient wondering if this was recent events. “It was January 4th…” (7 months ago?) “1994” (oh, a long time ago) “when I last saw Nirvana” (oh, obviously this is a historical event).
Had you said you saw them in 1994, the month and especially day are likely irrelevant unless the story involves the weather, association with an event, or your story has something to do with how close to was to the singer’s death. Kurt Cobain died April (“this year?” - someone unfamiliar) 5th (of??) 1994 (oh wow, right by the date you already read in this conversation, providing plenty of context).
It takes all 3 bits of information to make a complete statement. Any single bit can be used alone effectively to convey enough meaning. You could say you saw them in 1994, a few months before his death, and provide plenty of context to convey the meaning. You could say you saw them 1994 (oh wow, how close to his death?) January (3 months prior) 4th (I do not care about the 4th)
Ill die on this other 3rd hill
I will read 100200300 as two hundred thousand one hundred one hundred million from now on.
Agreed. And at this point people should say all recent years as “twenty-twenty-six”, etc. The few people who still insist on saying “two-thousand and” make me grind my teeth.
Twenty-nine.
Wdym 2009 doesn’t count as a recent year? :'(
2009 = “two thousand nine” (or “twenty oh-nine” if you’re a time traveler from a previous century).
2026 = “twenty twenty-six”.
If you say “two thousand AND twenty-six”…I assume you probably write your name in your underwear.
Which is kind useless for everthing but storing files and data, i want to know the day and maybe the month not the year since it doesn’t change often
I would take it a step further by doing what the Japanese and Chinese languages do and possibly even making their characters for day, month, and year a worldwide symbol to be used for dates. That, or have the world come together to create worldwide usable symbols for all that. Really make sure nobody can be confused because they cannot tell whether it’s a European date or a states date.