Dates should always be represented with as much context as possible in transit & storage. Don't give me a date like "Mar 16" please
@brainblasted what would you want them stored as?
@chergert Rather, if they're strings they should be strings with as much context as possible, e.g. 2026-03-16 vs. "Mar 16"

@brainblasted Certainly storing them as anything but ISO 8601 is a Bad Ideaâ„¢.

The only numeric cases I can think of are databases where you might want numeric indexing (but still keeping various parts separate). Governments have a nasty habit of retroactively changing time and it makes things quite difficult.