James
nixCraft 🐧date formats 😅
sameer@nixCraft this just explained so much to me
Lev Petrovitch@nixCraft
export LC_DATE = en_uk
export LC_DATE = en_uk
darrenmoffat@levpetrovitch @nixCraft en_GB since that is the ISO country code, the country code UK isn’t assigned, not to be confused with .uk as the common .TLD
a.Albi@nixCraft
YYYY/MM/DD supremacy
YYYY/MM/DD supremacy
Charlotte Ariel Finn@albinanigans @nixCraft Not to defend the practice, but when I say a date out loud, I say "March 21st, 2021" or the like, so that translated to numerical format makes some sense.
But yes, for record keeping, year-month-day is better 'cause it's easier to sort by date!
@Charlotte @albinanigans @nixCraft When I say a date out loud I say First of February 2023. The US date format is weird to most of the rest of the world (not bad, just weird)
@hijames @albinanigans @nixCraft Yeah, it's a pretty persistent thing with the US and it bleeds over into Canada. We are technically metric, but interacting so much with the US means we have to use a lot of imperial as well.
Seirdy@albinanigans @nixCraft I recently learned that ISO-8601 is actually extremely broad, allowing for several different date formats. None of them violate year-month-day hierarchy though.
I like using the best overlap between ISO-8601, RFC-3339, and the HTML standard that I can. This page describes the overlap quite nicely. If the diagram at the top isn’t accessible, there’s a table at the bottom.
YYYY-MM-DD is the only date format that’s valid across all three standards, but there are too many valid Date-Time formats IMO.
Bernd Herd@nixCraft You mean the country that still uses inches/miles instead of SI-meters, fahrenheit instead of SI-Kelvin/Celsius etc.? Why do you wonder about dates, they are just a tiny fraction of it...
Can you tell me (by heart), how many inches give a mile?
Or how many cubic inches give a gallon?
dn@herdsoft 63,360 - but I had to calculate it. If you'd asked "how many yards in one mile" then it would have been an instant answer!
matrillox
Mark Keisler@nixCraft ISO8601 is the only proper format.
Count Regal Inkwell@nixCraft It does make sense -- If you consider it is the order in which english speakers SAY dates.
It's not a systemic logic but a "it just sorta happened" logic. Much like the Imperial "system" of measurements.
Mark Harris@vinesnfluff @nixCraft That's happenstance, not logic.
interru@vinesnfluff @nixCraft That's just shifts the illogical part a step away. It's still illogical by proxy.
From the perspective of efficiency there are good arguments for:
- most significant info first: Makes sense because the most significant part also has the biggest impact.
- least first: Makes sense if you assume that the more significant information can be assumed by context.
I still fail to see a good argument for MM/DD/YYYY.
From the perspective of efficiency there are good arguments for:
- most significant info first: Makes sense because the most significant part also has the biggest impact.
- least first: Makes sense if you assume that the more significant information can be assumed by context.
I still fail to see a good argument for MM/DD/YYYY.
tautology@vinesnfluff @nixCraft Only English speakers in the US (and sometimes Canada). Over here we say 1st February 2023.
Alan Thompson@vinesnfluff @nixCraft which English speakers? It varies.
Joe JulianI'm going to go outside. Which piece of information about the date is of the highest value when choosing what to wear?
Not the year. Not the day of the month.
It's a sunny February morning, but the month means it's winter and the weather will probably change. Better bring the warm waterproof coat.
mm/dd/yyyy is ordered by the importance of the data to a human.
niems@JoeJulian
Usually you get something like mm/dd/yy and as a European person you're SOL trying to figure out what is meant about 1/3 of every month...
@nixCraft
Usually you get something like mm/dd/yy and as a European person you're SOL trying to figure out what is meant about 1/3 of every month...
@nixCraft
@niemalsnever @nixCraft The European date standard seem the least logical of all. At least I can see some sense of history in the month-first approach as our agrarian ancestors were much more interested in the month than anything.
But from a strictly logical point of view, yyyy/mm/dd is the only other format that makes sense as it follows the same pattern as how we format numbers, the rightmost digit incrementing and carrying to the left.
btw, this is all tongue-in-cheek and just for fun.
Ben@JoeJulian @nixCraft maybe in the northern hemisphere...
dragonfrog@JoeJulian @nixCraft
Only because we all messed up and missed the opportunity to adopt the Republican calendar.
"Does the day of the month end in 9 or 0? If so then I don't have to get dressed *at all* because it's the weekend."
We were almost a real country.
Jiří Fiala Total Landscaping@JoeJulian @nixCraft I'm expecting a plumber in the next few days. Guess which part of the date is the most important? It's not the month :) See? Two can play that game ;)
Fleur Chrysaliz 
@JoeJulian @nixCraft Then it should be Weekday because i wanna know when i gotta work, When i think on those terms the day is more important, not the month because of Fashion, but the day in which i will work or will go talk to a friend or will take holidays or vacation days. Literally no one ever said to one another "See you in February" the day is always more important in the human context. Also for clothes, you sort by season, not month.
Stephen J. Anderson@JoeJulian @nixCraft Wait, you check the calendar before you go outside?
bEA 🔓@JoeJulian ah yes, written dates. That’s how I prioritise clothing. Not say, the weather forecast or anything. Hell no. I write down the date and then cross out everything after the first element. Only then can I get dressed. I then make sure to forget this information immediately so I can do the same thing tomorrow.
Tom DB 🦣
Sebastiaan Hekman
Falcon@nixCraft "european logic" = rest of the world almost? At least latin america uses that as default.
Rick Valenzuela@nixCraft Amused at the defense of MMDDYYYY because it matches their presumably American colloquial usage -- which comes twith the most ironic exception, the Fourth of July 
🧀queso y glaucimolo🥑
Sietske van Vugt
Alka@nixCraft from the people that still use the imperial units I'm not surprised.
Barefoot in kitchen feminist@nixCraft not the only fucked up American logic. F.i. Drivers here speed up up hill, but break downhill. WTF??
Iron Curtain (Chiptunes)@nixCraft ISO 8601 makes the most sense, as it descends into smaller units all the way down. European goes up, then goes down. American is all over the place.
Shannon@nixCraft Yes! This drives me nuts that Americans do it that way!
Lunatech@nixCraft It is because before computers Americans traditionally wrote out dates in a format like January 31, 1900. Then computers came along and wanted the month expressed as numbers, so 01/31/1900.
I think most Americans can handle the YYYY-MM-DD formart without it breaking our brains but the European DD.MM.YY format just makes no sense to us. Putting the day in front of the month just seems absolutely wrong to us, in part because we have never done it that way but also if you are planning an event, in many cases the month is the first thing you want to know, then the day. But you only need to know the year if the event is more than a year away.
Steve Gibson 
@nixCraft
One hypothesis is that we Americans (originally British colonists) brought the format over from Britain. Apparently, the U.K. used the same format until the 20th century when they decided to change it to the way the Europeans were doing it. As expected, we Americans were like “fuck that, even if we could get all of our fucking states to agree on it, it’d be too hard to teach everyone to use a new format”
One hypothesis is that we Americans (originally British colonists) brought the format over from Britain. Apparently, the U.K. used the same format until the 20th century when they decided to change it to the way the Europeans were doing it. As expected, we Americans were like “fuck that, even if we could get all of our fucking states to agree on it, it’d be too hard to teach everyone to use a new format”
Kosch@nixCraft
Haven’t really cared much about format since I retired 😆
I’m content with knowing the day of the week 😎 (well, sometimes 🤔)
Anders Rytter Hansen
Unni Leino@nixCraft
And then there's the NATO standard date-time group: ddhhmmZMONyy (that is, day, hour, and minute with two digits each, time zone coded into a single letter, the first three letters of the month in the language of the document, and year as two digits) 🤪
And then there's the NATO standard date-time group: ddhhmmZMONyy (that is, day, hour, and minute with two digits each, time zone coded into a single letter, the first three letters of the month in the language of the document, and year as two digits) 🤪
Jimmy Barnes@nixCraft USG uses the European format internally. I loved it. Once I got back in the private sector I kept doing it that way and it drove everyone crazy.
@nixCraft
We have clearly demonstrated, as a society, that we are not mature enough to handle months. The only thing for it is to abolish them.
Both DDD/YYYY and YYYY/DDD formats are unambiguous unless one is talking about dates before the year 367 CE and honestly that seldom comes up in most everyday contexts.
Today is just the 32nd of 2023. Shorten it however you like it's still clear.
Shawn@nixCraft I think it’s because there are twelve “15th day of the month” per year and so the month itself modifies the number, like an adjective. We say “October 15th,” or “the 15th of October.” We don’t say “15 October” because the number has to be referring to something directly. Numbers can’t float. “15 October ‘what’? Birthdays? What are we counting?”
HTTP 1.1/418 Old Teapot Typewriter Font@nixCraft It fits in well with the lengths we'll go to in order to avoid using the metric system!
Elvith Ma'for@nixCraft Unix logic: 1675282438
Madness832@nixCraft So, from the States, one gets a trapezoid-and-triangle sandwich?🤔😄
Mr. Bruno 
@nixCraft I'm an ISO boy... Trivial to sort! 
Tux 🐧@nixCraft YYYY-MM-DD ❤️
Prof. - Xadke@nixCraft exactly, LOLz.
CaptainSmartass@nixCraft the internet: you shouldn't bully other cultures, we should embrace diversity.
also the internet: hur dur, aren't those Americans dumb for writing dates like that?
Seriously, the joke is dead, stop beating it with a stick.
@captainsmartass @nixCraft Nah, mocking America is an international sport.
@nzlemming @nixCraft that's because it takes the entire world mocking America to keep the sides even.
@captainsmartass @nixCraft Well, if you're proud of being the biggest, dumbest gorilla in the elevator, you go for it.