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Hot take: going from biggest to smallest unit is best
go away robot with your beep boop propaganda humans are supreme and not computers we aren’t saying our dates like a file manager
If you want a properly self-organising file structure, going by least changing unit to most changing unit is absolutely the correct way to go
It’s literally the international standard
2023-12-12T08:52:02Z
For sorting files by date (yyyy/mm/dd), sure, but for keeping track of what date it is today, dd/mm/yyyy is the only right way.
Ah, the “human scale” fahrenheit argument.
Not really, no. Some things are best for one thing, others are best for another, and Fahrenheit is ridiculous under all circumstances.
That’s also the argument for metric, scaling by 10’s is easy for us to calculate because we have 10 fingers
Why?
The first one is best for sorting files because it’s basically like a Drive>Directory>Subdirectory structure, which makes things easy to seperate and find in a large amount of data.
Conversely, when you’re keeping track of what day it is today, what you’re doing this week etc, it’s much more helpful to have the days first in mind because they’re more relevant for THAT than what year it is.
You can just do mm/dd or even just dd in that case, you don’t need the year
You can just do mm/dd
That makes about as much sense as measuring travel distance in smoots.
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No it isnt. We arent computers, we are humans. In most uses, the year is the least relevant information for us. The most important information is the day, which should be in front. And computers can be programmed to understand the date in whichever format we want.
If the year isn’t important than why are you saying it at all
Also it’s not yyyy/mm/dd for computer sake, it’s most convenient for humans because it has the most variations. If you’re searching through 100 years of records then finding the year first is most convenient because you’ve ruled out 99%. For computers it doesn’t really matter because they can go through all the data much quicker than we can
Calling hogwash on this one. Is it more important that an event took place in 1992, or that it took place on the 12th?
How often do you use the year when talking about dates? Does your boss say “i need this done by 2023-12-22”? For day to day use, the day is the most relevant info. The year and even the month is often implied.
For day to day use within the current month the day is the most important detail. Outside of that, it’s largely irrelevant.
ISO8601
I agree, so easy to sort stuff like that. :)
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I prefer YYYY MM DD myself, and I am assuming that the US operates along weird similar logic but just considers the year irrelevant for most dates, tacking it on at the end instead when the year needs to be mentioned so that the unstated/assumed dates which omit the year still begin the same way.
I think that’s too much thinking, I’m pretty sure it’s simpler than that. North Americans say “December Twelfth” or “May Forth” or “March Fourteenth” rather than “The Fourteenth of March”.
So they go “March -> 3”, “Fourteenth -> 14”, and you get “3/14” that you can read from left to right as “March Fourteenth”. That’s about it, I’m pretty sure.
And so long as everyone agrees which one comes first it’s not ambiguous. Of course, everyone doesn’t agree, and there are logical reasons to pick the others, but this one is simply in reading order.
Like RFC 3339?
ISO8601 for the win
2023-12-12
ISO8601 is better for programming and scripting
RFC3339 is for when I’m feeling fancy
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i think they mean YYYY/MM/DD
Oops misread
That’s how it’s done in Canada
The real hot take is lighting up the controversy with asking why they chose the skin tones. Then you talk about dog whistles.
(other than posting too early for Americans to get the joke)
Not for us night shifters, silly
Forget about ISO 8601 and customary standards, let’s use SI units. Approximately 63 838 093.83 kiloseconds have passed since the beginning of the so-called “common era” in Greenwich.
is that fast SI seconds or slow SI seconds? (alt text)
Basically used averages:
2022 × 31 556 952 + 11 × 2 629 746 + 11 × 86 400 + [Hours] × 3 600 + [Minutes] × 60
I don’t remember the time it was when I did this lol. Basically, current date minus one and the time as is, times the average seconds for each. I just used 0001 as the “beginning of the common era” just to simplify things lol.
Edit: I used 0001 as the “beginning of the common era.”
The American system is kind of weird in some ways, but on the other hand it’s just writing it the way we say it out loud. December 12, 2023.
Do Europeans say it out loud the other way since you write it that way? 12 of December, 2023 for example.
Edit: It does sound like basically everyone writes it the way they say it out loud. Language is an interesting thing! Thanks for the insights everyone.
In the UK most folks would say it “12th of December”, prioritising the day of the month over the month…
Which begs the question, why prioritise saying the month first?
The day is going to have much more of an affect on the average person’s day to day life than what month it is, so it feels natural to prioritise stating the day first.deleted by creator
I don’t think it’s that deep, it’s just how we say it over here. People do sometimes say it the other way, too, it’s just less common. If someone is just talking about a date in the same month we’re currently in we usually just say the number without the month (the 12th). It’s interesting to hear it really does seem to mimic the way people say it out loud in every case so far in these replies!
Well if we’re talking day to day life, when I ask someone what day it is, they’re not going to say “It’s December 12th 2023”. They’re just gonna say “The 12th” because it’s true the month doesn’t really matter day to day.
I think the only time people use the full date is on like official forms where the month is more relevant. Also this is America, we don’t care about average people’s day to day, just businesses and money and cheeseburgers
In German we also say it in the order as we write it.
12.12.2023 Zwölfter Dezember 2023 Zwölf = twelve ter = th
We say 12th December. Sooo yeah…
In Britain you could say it either way round and nobody would care. Except we tend to say *‘twelfth’ * rather than *‘twelve’ * but yeah, totally normal thing to do here.
We actually say twelfth, too, at least where I’m from, though we almost always just write the number, not the spelled out version.
In Russia we absolutely say “12th of December, 2023”.
12 декабря 2023.
Shouldn’t there be a года at the end?
Optionally, to be more formal.
In regular conversations it is often left out
Yep, in Dutch we’d say “het is 12 December 2023”. When talking about dates I also say “it’s the 12th of December 2023” in English, but that’s probably a bit weird for English speakers.
It’s not weird for the British
I don’t think it’s weird, it just sounds a little more formal.
As an American (California native, living in the Midwest for the last decade), it’s not that weird. I hear people using “December 12th” and “12th of December” with about equal frequency. Written, though, “December 12th” is more common, and if you’re just using the numbers, everyone will assume the month is first.
It’s not weird, it’s correct
Yes, saying “December 12th” sounds incredibly American to the point I can’t read it not in an American accent.
Dane here to add that we say it tolvte December 2023 with tolvte meaning twelveth. Saying it the other way around would basically only happen if you forgot to specify the date or add it as an afterthought.
“Det er desember den tolvte” (norwegian) sounds weird
You can say two fewer words with the American version. “It’s December 12th” compared to “it’s the 12th of December”.
you don’t have to say the and of can just get reduced to the point it’s almost not even said
You can also just say it’s the 12th since basically everyone knows what month it is when they ask the date!
Let’s all say it this way now:
Today is 2023, December 12. The time as of this comment being written is 15:28 (3:28pm) GMT.
Should be UTC instead of GMT.
They’re technically the same anyway, only the name is different.
Also, I hate the name UTC, simply because the order of the letters of the acronym don’t match up with the first letters of the words of which the acronym stands for, which is Coordinated Universal Time, and not Universal Time Coordinated like I always thought.
Huh, I always thought it was French, but Wikipedia says UTC was a compromise intentionally neither French nor English. Politics is weird
Nope, in French it would TUC: Temps Universel Coordonné
That actually sounds like a cracker.
What does GMT stand for?
Greenwich Mean Time (because everything revolved around the British Empire)
That is indeed mean.
Thank goodness it’s not Greenwich Monstrous Time.
Zulu. It’s shorter and cooler
But I have to learn how to make those clicking noises first.
I still use imperial and other US standards because I was born here and have never lived anywhere else 😎
Please consider using civilised units as well
12/12/23?
This should replace the meme with the white dog.
