• xttweaponttx@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    It warms my heart to see so many comments in the camp of “I use it everywhere”. Absolutely same here. You are my people.

    • luciferofastora@discuss.online
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      1 year ago

      Together with hh:mm(:ss) for times and +hh:mm for timezones. Don’t make me deal with that 12am/pm bullshit that doesn’t make any sense, and don’t make make me look up just what the time difference is between CEST and IST. Just give me the offsets +02:00 and +05:30, and I can calculate that my local time of 06:55+03:30=10:25 in India.

    • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You never know when something might need to become a filename, so you might as well just use ISO 8601 for everything.

  • uncertainty@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    To the commenters justifying the written form MM-DD-YYYY on the basis of preferring to say the name of the month followed by the day (which the written numerical sequence does not preclude you from doing). If someone were to say something like “the time is a quarter to eleven” do you think they would have a case for writing it 45:10? And if so, how would you deal with the ambiguity of “ten past ten” if they wrote it 10:10 instead of 10:10?

  • keeslinp@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    ISO dates are the goat because they string compare correctly. Just yesterday I shaved 2 full seconds off a page transition by removing a date parse in the middle of a hot sorting loop. Everything should use ISO in my opinion.

  • corytheboyd@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Christ, do this many people really find iso8601 hard to read? It’s the date and the time with a T in the middle.

    • Djtecha@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I think it’s fair that programmatic and human readable can be different. If someone is putting in the month word for a logging system they can fuck right off though

      • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If someone is putting in the month word for a logging system they can fuck right off though

        That way you can sort the months of the year, in order:

        • April
        • August
        • December
        • February
        • January
        • July
        • June
        • March
        • May
        • November
        • September
    • Cuttlefishcarl@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Not “many people.” Americans. Americans find it hard to read. I’m not 100% sure but I’m fairly certain everyone else in the world agrees that either day/month/year or year/month/day is the best way to clearly indicate a date. You know, because big to small. America believes month/day/year for some stupid fucking reason.

      • pythonoob@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        I’m pretty sure it’s because of the way we say it. Like, “May 6th, 2023”. So we write it 5/6/2023.

        That said, I think it’s fucking stupid.

        • Windows2000Srv@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          I’m not an American and English isn’t my first language, so the US way to write dates always confused me. Now, I finally understand it! Many thanks, this is legitimately sooooo useful!

      • Pulptastic@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Day/month/year is not in the same category as y/m/d. That crap is so ambiguous. Is today August 9th? Or September 8th? Y/m/d to the rescue.

    • dilawar@lemm.eeB
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      1 year ago

      As long as they use letter for months, like Jul 09, 2013 its fine. Otherwise prefer a sorted timescale version. Either slow changing to fast changing yyyy mm dd or fast to slow dd mm yyyy.

      • pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        The letters make no sense to me. Like Jul, Jun, I’m constantly mixing them up. Give me a good solid number like 07 or 10. No mixing that up. Higher numbers come after lower numbers, simple as.

  • words_number@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    I really wonder how americans were able to fuck this one up. There are three ways to arrange these and two of them are acceptable!

    Edit: Yes, I meant common ways, not combinatorically possible ways.

      • rmuk@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        Twelve ways if you count two-digit years. My nephew was born on 12/12/12 which was convenient.

      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Three ways that people actually use. YYYY-MM-DD, DD-MM-YYYY, and MM-DD-YYYY (ew).

        AFAIK no-one does YYYY-DD-MM, DD-YYYY-MM, or MM-YYYY-DD… yet. Don’t let the Americans know about these formats, they might just start using them out of spite.

          • luciferofastora@discuss.online
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            1 year ago

            What, 2023-223 for the 223rd day of the year 2023? That… is oddly appealing for telling the actual progress of the year or grouping. No silly “does this group have 31, 30, 29 or 28 members”, particularly the “is this year a multiple of four, but not of 100, unless it’s also a multiple of 400?” bit with leap days.

            You’ll have oddities still, no matter which way you slice it, because our orbit is mathematically imperfect, but it’s a start.

    • sift@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s how the dates are typically said, here. November 6th, 2020 = 11/6/2020. [Edit: I had written 9 instead of 11 for November.] (We basically never say the sixth of November. It sounds positively ancient.) It’s easy to use, but I agree that YYYY-MM-DD is vastly superior for organization.

      • yata@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        It is a bit of a chicken and egg question though. Because do Americans not say it that way because of the date format or is that the date format because you don’t say it that way?

        Because in countries using DD.MM.YY we absolutely do say 6th of November.

        • duffman@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That’s probably what happened. Though I do like starting with the larger context when talking about dates, but omitting it when talking about the current month or year.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        We basically never say the sixth of November. It sounds positively ancient.

        When is your independence day, again?

        Anyway, in Australia (and, I suspect, other places that use DD/MM/YYYY) we use “{ordinal} of {month}” (11th of August), “{ordinal} {month}” (11th August), and “{month} {ordinal}” (August 11th) pretty much interchangeably. In writing but not in speaking, we also sometimes use “{number} {month}” (11 August). That doesn’t have any bearing on how we write it short form though, because those are different things. It’s not the defence many Americans seem to think it is of their insane method of writing the short form.

        • sift@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It’s not the defence many Americans seem to think it is of their insane method of writing the short form.

          I’ve never once been confused about a written date whilst in the US. Your country’s other-side-of-the-Earth flip-floppery on how it uses dates really doesn’t (and shouldn’t) impact our system, which we continue to use because it has proven effective and easy. Trying to stagnate an evolving culture/language is pointless and about as futile as trying to force a river to run backwards. If people start jumbling up how we do it here, like you say Australia does, then that will be right, too.

    • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Do people outside of the US not say dates like “June first” etc? M/D/Y matches that. It’s really not weird at all, even if the international ambiguity is awful.

      • tchotchony@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Flemish here (aka dutch-speaking). We say first June, sixth November etc. English isn’t our native language, so M/D/Y is weird as fuck and completely illogical to us.

      • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Yes it is objectively weird.

        When you write down “07/01/1967” are you unaware that it is unclear whether you’re referring to July 1st or January 7th?

        And despite the fact that you’re writing something down for the express purpose of communicating information, and you’re choosing to shorten it’s written format to save time and space, you’re ok with either

        a) just leaving it ambiguous and communicating poorly

        or

        b) having to write extra words to give it context, taking up more space than just writing out “July 1st, 1967”?

        1967/06/01 clearly communicates we’re starting with the year and going biggest to smallest time increments. There is no ambiguity as to which order it’s ever in, and it’s far shorter than the full written date.

        At a fundamental user experience level, it is objectively nonsensical to choose the American date format when your goals are 1) clearly communicating a date and 2) doing it shorter than writing out the words.

        • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          It’s not unclear to americans. “Objectively” is hilarious here. If it’s in the format people expect, then it’s perfectly fine in context. Sorry that US traditions don’t suit your fancy.

          It’s definitely confusing in an international context, but well-estsblished conventions don’t change easily.

          • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            It’s not unclear to americans. “Objectively” is hilarious here. If it’s in the format people expect, then it’s perfectly fine in context. Sorry that US traditions don’t suit your fancy.

            Yes, if you chose the objectively wrong way of doing something and then tell everyone that you’re always going to do it the wrong way, then yes, people will expect you to do it the dumb way. Congratulations. That’s how choosing a protocol works. That doesn’t mean that some protocols aren’t objectively worse than others.

            It’s hilarious that you think “objective” is hilarious, given that you’re reasoning is based 100% on the subjective experiences of Americans.

            • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              That’s how formats work, I hate to break it to you. The ambiguity sucks, but the format itself makes perfect sense given the way americans say dates.

              • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                The ambiguity sucks, but the format itself makes perfect sense given the way americans say dates.

                We all say dates the same.

                It’s objectively dumb because it’s the format that results in ambiguity. Again, the point that it’s good cause Americans are familiar with it is a subjective criteria, since it only applies to American’s experience with using it, whereas the ambiguity of an out of order time span is an objective one.

                • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
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                  1 year ago

                  Only the combination of formats results in ambiguity. Neither format is ambiguous on its own.

                  Standardization is good, and if someone were to change it should probably be the US given the apparent worldwide consensus otherwise. That doesn’t make either format good or bad on its own.

                  What I take issue with is people acting like the US format is some kind of bizarro nonsense when it in fact makes perfect sense in terms of matching spoken dates. That is hardly a weird basis for a format.

                  Each has its tradeoffs, and which set of tradeoffs is better is a subjective matter. I agree that d/m/y makes the most sense for an international standard (if not y/m/d), but to claim that the US format itself is somehow objectively bad is silly.

      • Senchanokancho@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        In Germany we say things like “we meet on the twelfth fifth” (Zwölfter Fünfter), which is the twelfth day of the fifth month. Often times the year is also shortened to only the last two digits, so it could be twelfth fifth twenty-four in dd-mm-yy format.

        Of course we also use the names of the months, but sometimes we just number them.

    • FleetingTit@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      ISO 8601 ftw. Here’s the date, time, and duration for our next meeting:

      2023-08-10T20:00:00PT2H30M

        • baltakatei@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          It handles ambiguity too. Want to say something lasts for a period of 1 month without needing to bother checking how many days are in the current and next month? P1M. Done. Want to be more explicit and say 30 days? P30D. Want to say it in hours? Add the T separator: PT720H.

          I used this kind of notation all the time when exporting logged historical data from SCADA systems into a file whose name I wanted to quickly communicate the start of a log and how long it ran:

          20230701T0000-07--P30D..v101_pressure.csv

          (“--” is the ISO-8601 (2004) recommended substitute for “/” in file names)

          If anyone is interested, I made this Bash script to give me uptime but expressed as an ISO 8601 time period.

          $ bkuptime
          P2DT4H22M4S/2023-08-15T02:01:00+0000, 2 users,  load average: 1.71, 0.87, 0.68
          
  • Tekchip@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Lot of talk of numerics only. The problem there is knowing what format the information is in since clearly there are 3 possibilities. Without context and during certain parts of the month you’re hosed. Best to remove ambiguity and go with the alpha numeric format.

    DD MMM YY (or alternatively YYYY)

    11 Aug 2023

    Ambiguity gone.

      • thawed_caveman@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Any date format can be unambiguous as long as it’s the one that everyone agrees on, and all date formats will be ambiguous as long as we have several in use.

        I kinda gave up, nowadays when i write a date to someone i specify the date format. Like i will send “01/05/2024 (DD/MM/YYYY)” because it’s the only way to be sure

    • cognitive@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The second reason why yyyy-MM-dd is the correct way to write days (beside being sortable by default) is because even Americans doesn’t have any similar format that it can be confused with.

      I learned this in my first half year as a programmer I think, somewhere well over a decade back and so far it seems that guy was right.

      • Tekchip@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        As monsterous as it is yyyy-mm-dd could also be misconstrued by said unfortunate Americans as yyyy-dd-mm because…well…yeah. As noted elsewhere this dd mmm yyyy format also works nicely in written and verbal communication as 12th of august where no one ever is going to write or speak to each other twenty twenty three august twelfth. So again, more universal and less ambiguous.

    • ramplay@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      There’s no amibuity with year first and done properly like YYYY-MM-DD.

      Your reasoning is that the ambiguity exists due to using numbers. The ambiguity is only for 2/3 numerical methods

      • Tekchip@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        As monstrous as it is yyyy-mm-dd could also be misconstrued by said unfortunate Americans as yyyy-dd-mm because…well…yeah. As noted elsewhere this dd mmm yyyy format also works nicely in written and verbal communication as 12th of august where no one ever is going to write or speak to each other twenty twenty three august twelfth. So again, more universal and less ambiguous.

    • rar@discuss.online
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      1 year ago

      Problem is that languages get in the way. Some are pretty similar like 15 ago (Spanish) being 15 Aug (English), but 1 ene (Spanish) aren’t that similar to 1 Jan (English).

      And for the usual “But English is used everwhere! I live in X!” crowd: NO, it isn’t. Not everything you see as an “expat” is the same as the actual locals with their own language.