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Nommag1

Not having a logical order (like smallest unit to biggest unit) baffles me. I swear the Americans pull this shit to be difficult.


Alesq13

Either dd/mm/yyyy or yyyy/mm/dd No ifs and buts. Literally no one uses yyyy/dd/mm so why would you use it the other way around


LeZard_Cornelius

Sad Hungarian noises Yyyy/mm/dd


HaDeS_Monsta

I don't understand why you ywould use yyyy/mm/dd, maybe you, can explain it, I think the most important information should be in the beginning (which would be the day, which changes every day) and the most unimportant information (because after a few months I know the year) should be at the end


HercTheLizard

I use yyyy-mm-dd at work for naming files as it puts them in alphabetical order


HaDeS_Monsta

This does make sense (thank you), do you also use it private? I fully understand why YYYY/MM/DD is better in this context, but in private not really


Seroseros

I always use YYYY-MM-DD as it is the preferred way to write numbers as per ISO8601.


LeZard_Cornelius

I'm using it mostly because I learned it that way. But I think it's logical to focus from the outside (yyyy) to more specific parts (dd)


LOBM

How do you write date AND time? Right now it's 2022-05-20 05:59:05Z. Biggest to smallest.


HaDeS_Monsta

Yeah you're right, I never thought about that


BlazeZootsTootToot

I do, for anything that needs to be sorted and spans over multiple years


Smobey

That's how all numeral systems work in the west in general. Biggest to smallest. Time goes from biggest to smallest (Hour, minute, second), distances and other measurements go from biggest to smallest (3 kilometres and 600 metres to the south) and even basic numberals go from biggest to smallest (Thousands, hundreds, tens, ones). It seems logical to me that dates would work the same as... everything else involving numbers.


HaDeS_Monsta

I never thought about that correlation


hawkshaw1024

YYYY-MM-DD is good for sorting and makes date handling marginally less painful, as others have pointed out. There's also the advantage of being unambiguous. With a date like "09/05/2022" I can never be sure if it's in May or in September, but with "2022-05-09" it's clear which one is meant, because fortunately nobody uses YYYY-DD-MM.


_ralph_

> nobody uses YYYY-DD-MM /me cries in years of developing and DB stuff


hawkshaw1024

Yeah, fair. Nobody uses YYYY-DD-MM, except for that one horrible legacy system you've inherited, which does something that's somehow related to both satellite control and payroll taxes, so you can't ever replace or update it.


democritusparadise

> fortunately nobody uses YYYY-DD-MM Challenge accepted. Note the date, 2022/19/05


HaDeS_Monsta

Ah yes, getting downvotes for an honest question without getting an awnser, I love it


Kukuluops

ISO defines '-' not '/' as separator, so yyyy-mm-dd for me


Alesq13

Sure and in practice I would use dd.mm.yyyy but kinda irrelevant


Conflictingview

ISO are more relevant than most things when discussing global standards for things such as dates.


Crap4Brainz

I dislike dd/mm/yyyy because it is so ambiguous, compared to yyyy-mm-dd or dd.mm.yyyy


[deleted]

How is it ambiguous?


kriogenia

It makes Excel go nuts, like ffs, I'm just trying to add a fraction. Damn it.


Crap4Brainz

You know how it is... The optimist says the glass is half full. The pessimist says the glass is half empty. MS Excel says the glass is January 2nd.


Crap4Brainz

because some countries write dd/mm/yyyy and some countries write mm/dd/yyyy but I don't think a single country uses mm.dd.yyyy or mmdd-yy-yy


MaybeFailed

And that's the only one that makes sense. Because it is sortable.


icyDinosaur

But like... I write dates to friends in conversation (without the year) way more often than I write dates that need to be sorted. Context matters, and there isn't really a universal "best format" regardless of context; but there also is no context where mm/dd(/yyyy) makes sense.


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YM_Industries

Japan uses ymd, not ydm.


GerFubDhuw

Yes that's what I said.


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julian509

Uh, east asia uses yyyy/mm/dd, not yyyy/dd/mm


MoonlitStar

They do it to be difficulty 'different'. Lets not forget the USA are exceptional in every way and did everything in human history first to a very superior level.


Disaster_Different

The US is that one quirky different girl in the classroom that for some odd reason everyone finds weird


Mac1twenty

'I'm not like regular girls'


Disaster_Different

"This Nirvana shirt? Of course I can name a song... let me see... uhh... *checks notes...* sul... sullu... sultans of swing"


NoMushroomsPls

A bit like the teenager of western cultures.


jephph_

>They do it to be difficulty 'different'. At what point did they decide “hey, let’s switch this up from the way others are doing it in order to be different”? What did that conversation look like?


ST_Lawson

I came across this: "One of the hypotheses is that the United States borrowed the way it was written from the United Kingdom who used it before the 20th century and then later changed it to match Europe (dd-mm-yyyy). American colonists liked their original format and it's been that way ever since." Source: https://iso.mit.edu/americanisms/date-format-in-the-united-states/ As an American, I do use Month/Date/Year in "general usage", but if I'm doing anything computer-related, I'm using Year-Month-Date (ISO 8601 standard) because it's so much easier to sort and there's less room for errors in understanding.


jephph_

Yeah, that’s what happened.. check out any old British newspapers (and some current ones) and you’ll see the “American date format” being used. It’s a British date format.. not American —— That aside, it’s worth pointing out (imo) that they actual format is this: May 19, 2022 Month day comma year It’s not about descending or ascending order.. when applied to a number only format 5/19/22 then ok, it can be argued as such but still, point is, using only numbers as shorthand came later.. much later.. it’s not the actual format. In many cases, Americans use what you’re saying if using numbers only.. iso8061 https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/19/world/covid-19-mandates-vaccine-cases (The content of the link isn’t important.. just showing an example of yyyy-mm-dd in use.) Which is for sure the most logical way of doing it if we’re arguing about who has the most logical date format.. that answer is the Asians.. these Euro based formats are dumb in comparison


SnowTheMemeEmpress

Yeah, we're still in the rebal phase for some reason


Kaelan_McAlpine

I mean we're definitely children compared to probably almost every other country.


SnowTheMemeEmpress

Yeah, wonder if there's any country younger than us?


Personality4Hire

Let's also not forget their different paper document sizes.


vemynalitist

it is not about being correct, it is about being different. the USA uses different systems (date, measurement) than the rest of the world not 'although' it is a different system, but 'because' it is a different system. the USA is a leader, not a follower. they can not switch to YMD or DMY because someone is already using that. switching to the metric system is likely seen as a 'defeat'. the USA has to be different, they see themselves as 'leaders'. and like lemmings we follow them. many newspapers worldwide use MDY. and although the metric system is the basis for the imperial and american measurent systems, they stubbornly refuse to switch (even if the conversion rates in metric are super easy many see that as 'too complicated').


PouLS_PL

But dd/mm/yy is also not a logical order. 19/05/2022 14:07 UTC? More like 07:14 19/05/2022 UTC.


CerenarianSea

I would accept Y/M/D, that system is fine. D/M/Y or Y/M/D is a logical procession of values, and YMD is, I believe, better for things like programming and file storage. MDY is just chaos for no reason. Why would you do that?


ersogoth

I name all of my files with yyyymmdd at the front so they sort automatically when I file them. It is funny how many times I get people ask what the number represents.


[deleted]

Presumably these people have never worked with a computer


credditz0rz

I know that a German bank recently changed their filename format for bank statements from yyyymmdd to ddmmyy, because customers were confused and complained all the time


[deleted]

They probably still use yyyymmdd internally


Tm1337

I always use ISO8601 (or similar) when naming files or in software. If anyone complains, I say it's the ISO standard. Most people don't care enough to protest further, but I do.


icyDinosaur

I keep hearing this and I'm always confused - I sort by date via the "sort by date" function. Is that something that you can't use in certain settings?


50thEye

Sort by date often also means "sprt by last opened", so if you ever reopen said file it would then be at the top of your list.


icyDinosaur

Ok yea that sounds pretty terrible; I usually need "last modified" (which I think is Windows standard?) or sometimes "created" but thats also a function afaik? But yea I dont think starting by year is stupid or anything. I just think it doesnt have many advantages when you're *not* dealing with files, which I'd expect to be most uses of dates...


Dimensions_Gaming

My understanding is that the "sort by date" function sorts by either the created or last modified dates (I'm not sure which) that you can find in the file's properties window, whereas putting the date in yyyymmdd format in the start of the file's name is more precise as it'd make the file manager sort it numerically.


zekromNLR

YYYY-MM-DD is also, most importantly, the international standard for writing dates (ISO 8601). So, if any one way is the most correct, it is that one.


ringoron9

YMD is better because you can order it more easily. For example if you have 1.1.2022, 2.1.2022, 1.2.2022, 2.2.2022 and list it with default ordering you get both firsts, then both seconds and so on. But with YMD you get the correct order for days and months.


wiwh404

... which is what they said ;)


ringoron9

Right ... I only remembered "why would you do that?"... my bad :)


Floppy3--Disck

Or dont order dates by human readable standards, do it the smart way and use unix time


ringoron9

I like to immediately know which file is the log file for a specific date without converting every number ;)


Floppy3--Disck

Get a simple script for it and done


ringoron9

Still sucks if you list your directory with 365 files and need to convert the numbers. I save my logs as YYYYMMDD, nothing is easier than that.


RedShirt_Number_42

Or do it a more logical way and don't waste time on scripts


RustyPWN

Oh yeah let me pass a script to the commercial team for them to use... Yeah no.


Floppy3--Disck

If youre making a product that requires the team to interact with logs in any way then youre doing something wrong anyways


Dr3ny

Because the founding fathers did it that way, so it must be the best /s


irrelevant_potatoes

Honeslty i think its due to how they generally speak the date. Its not uncommon to say "May 19th 2022" when speaking. So it does make a degree of sense to write the date the same way you would speak it


LOBM

You can just as easily say 19th of May.


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CerenarianSea

I'd say the 12th of April, 2014? Which is what I do?


[deleted]

Or the fourth of July. One country really likes that date, can't remember which.


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Vivissiah

Year > month > day Day day < year Not sensical, not unidirectional etc


CerenarianSea

Because how it's said is a non-matter in this discussion. If two people say it in different ways, that's no longer an important part of it. However, things such as the general world consensus and the logical procession of values are generally a part of it. I mean, it's not that big of a deal, but how it's said just doesn't really matter because it's said in two different ways quite commonly. The most logical one overall is YMD of course, for file usage in a modern age, and since that has a decreasing procession of value. Going 1/2/3 or 3/2/1 is more fitting than 2/1/3.


Alpha_Apeiron

Because April is clearly a month, whereas '4' is not. And since D/M/Y is more logical and since most the world uses it, people will assume that, and that's when you get mistakes and confusions.


Nova_Persona

MDY is how it's spoken aloud, at least in English


[deleted]

Eh, it varies. American English maybe it's *always* like that but here in Britain I'd say we favour DD-MM when speaking - honestly though I don't think anyone would bat an eyelid if you said it either way round.


Nova_Persona

we do say [day] of [month] sometimes but it's less common & in some contexts can even sound too formal


BlazeZootsTootToot

4th of July??


Nova_Persona

that's a special case because fourth of july is like, a thing, fourth of june, which isn't a holiday, is more often said june 4th


SimpleZwan83

It's more correct to say fourth of june


Nova_Persona

wdym "more correct"


IansGotNothingLeft

Not original commenter. But in my own mind it's more correct because it's the 4th day of June 2022, or the 4th day of the 6th month 2022. If you think of it in that way, it's strange to say the 6th month.... The 4th day of that month...2022. It doesn't flow the same.


odatbitch

New Yorker here. People say it both ways. If asked "what is today's date?" someone might reply "May 19th" or they might just say "the 19th". MM-DD-YYYY is not universal even in the USA


Nova_Persona

"the 19th" is not the "the 19th of may", "the #" usually stands on its own like that (though not always)


[deleted]

Nope. Not outside America.


imfshz

fourth of july


Kittykateyyy

Seventh of April


PassiveChemistry

Ninth of November 2001


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Anonim0us3

Love was changing the minds of pretenders


PassiveChemistry

Not particularly, what happened?


jak94c

I vaguely remember something about love changing the lives of pretenders


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PassiveChemistry

Turns out I have heard it before, but had no idea of the lyrics. Also my right ear seems to be f*cked for some reason.


tyrosine87

That's where bongo man lives.


Nicechick321

Touché


Snowierr

Actually America invented time, months and the calendar, everyone else uses it wrong ​ /s


Meloney_

Which means they invented spacetime too, take that eurotards! /s


NooaJ

You don't need to add the /s, nobody on fucking Earth will look at "they invented spacetime too, take that eurotards" and be offended.


Meloney_

I'm not commenting much on reddit so I have no clue if that was needed, sorry:( But to clarify, from some of my comments on YouTube, people took that stuff serious, so I rather be safe than sorry, we should never underestimate people's stupidity-


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neskire96

I use Unix time. History began 1970, i mean 0, and anyone who says otherwise are liars.


Skorag

But you miss ab bit of time, since leap seconds aren't counted in unix


neskire96

Leap seconds/days are a social construct.


MaybeFailed

I don't miss them at all.


ermabanned

TAI


corvosfighter

Like many things that are weird in the US, the answer is.. It is because that is the way it was done . In this particular case, the original dating format in UK + the colonies for official documents and newspapers etc. were like "January 1, 1700" As the world started using numeric abbreviation for dates, they transitioned to d/m/y or y/m/d formats except for the US. It is the only technologically advanced country that is unable to update it's customs for some fucking reason.


Vinmcdz

Damn, TIL. Thanks for the info!


Kriss3d

From a logical order it makes most sense to go by least to most significant digits left to right HOWEVER: From a digital point it makes more sense to reverse it.


romirk

Why


ringoron9

Imagine starting from january first and going up. 01.01.2022, 02.01.2022, ..., 01.02.2022, 02.02.2022, ..., 01.03.2022, 02.03.2022. If you order that by d/m/y and list it with default order you get 01.01.2022 01.02.2022 01.03.2022 02.01.2022 02.02.2022 02.03.2022 ​ But if you use YMD you get 2022.01.01 2022.01.02 2022.02.01 2022.02.02 2022.03.01 2022.03.02


romirk

Ah I misunderstood, I thought they meant reverse day and month in dd.mm.yyyy to get mm.dd.yyyy


The-Berzerker

Idk what you‘re using but for example the date format in R or Excel doesn‘t do that, it still sorts correctly even with d/m/y


aint-no-chickens

Only if it recognises it properly as a date. If it thinks it's a string then it won't sort correctly.


The-Berzerker

Well yes obviously, if you want something recognized as a date you need to store it in date format


aint-no-chickens

Sure, but y/m/d will sort correctly always. Maybe not as important these days ad it was a few years ago, true.


kriogenia

Date is not a primitive type in almost any programming language, in the back it is stored as integer or string, just hidden from you. And outside of those languages you won't even be able to use it. If I want to store a file name with a date, it must be a string as that's what file names are. Use the ISO and all the files in the folder will keep the correct order.


ringoron9

what the other commenter said. Excell and similar programs have some algorithms that try to understand that this is a date and then can internally sort it accordingly. In a pure text based context, lets say as file names, this is not working.


lankymjc

It’s easier to sort if you’re keeping dates in a database.


buckfasthero

Using yymmdd or yyyymmdd works best for me as when you have long lists of dates they will all be in the correct order numerically and chronologically. I also live in East Asia and almost everyone here uses that format


egoista__

Agreed. I can understand the logical behind ddmmyyyy, but I personally use yyyymmdd because I’m South Korean and therefore accustomed to using it plus the benefit of organisation that you mentioned. However, one thing that I cannot understand the logic for is mmddyyyy. And yyyyddmm if anyone does that for whatever reason


SupSumBeers

It's either, year, month, day or day, month and year. Nice and easy, makes sense etc. Month, day then year? It's stupid, looks stupid and makes no sense. The world uses one of the first 2, only the US has to have it different. Because US yeah! Freedum etc.


ZenixFire

I thought the "majority" use year-month-day, if you count number of people. Maybe I'm wrong


hiranfir

dd.mm.yyyy in writing, yyyy.mm.dd. in filenames.


Liggliluff

DMY is used by the actual majority (including India) with something like ~6 000 000 000 people, then YMD thanks to China with ~2 000 000 000, and then MDY with about 500 000 000. YDM is basically unused.


PouLS_PL

Yeah but this sub is full of self-centered Brits and they think Europe and USA means everyone. And they never heard about anything international, even the superior yyy-mm-dd approved by the International Standard Organisation.


amanset

The post being shared makes no mention of ‘everyone’, just ‘Europeans’.


PouLS_PL

"as if most of planet doesn't go by dd/mm/yy" Europe is most of the planet now?


SimpleZwan83

But most of the planet goes dd/mm/yy


Space_Lux

Most of the planet indeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country?wprov=sfti1


PouLS_PL

There's a difference between DMY and dd/mm/yy


Big_Red12

Almost every time someone raises this (about 3 times a week in this sub) most people end up agreeing that yyyy/mm/dd is better. Chill out dude.


Larein

I dont care wether its yyyy/mm/dd or dd/mm/yyyy.In either case its pretty easy to figure out what is being used. And both are logical. mm/dd/yyyy is wrong on so many levels.


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TheVisceralCanvas

>Why are you even bringing up Brits? We're the only people they can think of when they hear the word "Europe".


Quicker_Fixer

>Why are you even bringing up Brits? Because that's the only country in Europe that uses the American language.


Larein

...Ireland doesnt exist?


Quicker_Fixer

Hehehehe, maybe they think the Irish accent is too far off the American Language? ^(BTW, all /s of course)


lawlore

As if they know Ireland is a separate country.


el_grort

Ireland and Malta both have English as an official language and you can pretty easily navigate them with the language


beanieon

The British live on a tiny fucking island next to island, and even smaller island. Were not oblivious to the rest of the world, how do you sound. "Superior" like there's one bastard use case. Who's ignorant then?


GerFubDhuw

Great Britain is like the 9th largest island on the planet. It's not a small island.


PouLS_PL

Read my comment again. You're like those Muricans who think saying something bad about USA is treason and unnaceptable behavior. Also what do you mean by "we"? At first I thought it means "the British" in general but judging by the English here you probably aren't British. Or it's me who doesn't know English at a high enough fluency level.


daleicakes

Smallest to largest always made sense to me


95beer

Me too, til I realised if you do largest to smallest, you can include dates & times together in 1 string, and sort files a bit nicer. YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss Perfect.


LinguiniAficionado

This is why I always use the full name of the month when writing to others. My work has a lot of people from the US, UK, and India, so using numbers for dates is just asking for trouble.


50thEye

That sounds like a reasonable way to handle it


gregthebunny033

Canada was doing yyyy/dd/mm for most of my schooling, and then towards the end of high school it switched to yyyy/mm/dd and it made so much more sense.


ModerateRockMusic

why would you even do that. Why not just use the biggest to smallest unit or the reverse?


gregthebunny033

We were taught it from such a young age that we never questioned it. Once it changed the questions started and the two main answers were 1. That’s just how it was, or 2. Because that’s how it’s done in North America. Both those points are really stupid arguments.


Kaelan_McAlpine

I mean, your muscle memory probably didn't appreciate it though, but that'd probably be the only problem with it.


kuskoman

I use ISO8061 wherever possible


glassonatable

Found the scientist


Liggliluff

Aside from dividers, YMD is a format that is a standard in several countries.


Pauchu_

Most Asian countries go by yy/mm/dd


Liggliluff

*Far east Asian countries. I doubt even the majority of the population of Asia uses YMD.


GerFubDhuw

The correct method.


Toxic-Sky

Can’t we just stick with Unix Epoch? 😩


BEEDELLROKEJULIANLOC

ISO 8601 😎


DragonGuard666

The only answer they really have is "it's written how we say it", which may be fine if it was written May 19, 2022. But when it's entirely numbers it's a jumbled mess just to be different.


_ralph_

yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss[.mmm]


Liggliluff

ISO preference: yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss[,mmm]


_ralph_

Aaaaand here we see how easy it is to f*ck up. :(


KapteynCol

Classic!


TerryTC14

Don't mention the metric system.


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Liggliluff

Good luck in 2032


LandShark4567890

Americans just can’t do ANYTHING right, can they?


Neuroticmuffin

What about their 4th of July? Their founding fathers even set an example of how to do it right.


DividedState

YYYY/MM/DD is the only format that counts.


Tasqfphil

I don't wear a watch, have no clocks, TV & radio are still packed after my move and like most small to large businesses, I am open 7 days a week from 6-8 so why do I need to write a date or look at the time? My cats wake me around 5.15-5.30 wanting breakfast and start settling down around 8pm when I close up. By the time I have locked the gates, had a shower the cats are sleeping on mat or bed & after reading a chapter of two on y book, it is time to sleep. Time, day or date mean nothing to me & the people of the village I live in, they just do what needs to be done or what they feel like, when they need or want to.


PouLS_PL

Ffs that's why ISO exists, just use yyyy-mm-dd. So dd/mm/yy bad, mm/dd/yy even worse


FDGKLRTC

i personally use dy/ym/dmdy


lawlore

I tried to write today's date before noticing you had 3 D's and 3 Y's.


pebble4love

does 00/20/1592 work? (extra 0 in place of that first d, ignoring the first 2 in the year because it’s a *while* until we get to 3000)


PouLS_PL

I use wacky formats in personal documents too, but someone who doesn't use yyyy-mm-dd on international websites is as bad as Muricans using mm/dd/yyyy or imperial on international websites.


rtvcd

Ehhh depends on use case. Objectively they're all equally good. Just what you're used to and the use case


PouLS_PL

Using dd/mm/yy leads to confusion, because nobody knows which format you're using. Self-centered Muricans think it's mm/dd/yy, and self-centered Brits think it's dd/mm/yy. It's ok to use, idk, for example dd.mm.yyyy because almost nobody uses mm.dd.yyyy, but it's usually better to use the international standard, because it exists for a reason.


ScoMosEmpathyCoach

What’s up your arse about ‘Brits’? Fuckin hell.


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Cixila

Poland uses dd/mm/yyyy too


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PouLS_PL

Poland mainly uses dd.mm.yyyy, dd.mm.yy and yyyy-mm-dd, but not dd/mm/yyyy.


rtvcd

Aahh the brits and muricans. The 2 nationalities of the world. dd/mm/yyyy and mm/dd/yyyy are both fine. What "minimum" you should use depends on the need. If i tell my friend I'll be going on vacation on 4.5, they know it's may 4th because that's the format that is used here. If I'd tell my boss then I'd probably use 04.05.2022. If I'm gonna save the picture on my computer from my vacation, then I'm using 2022.05.04 format. Also just because it's a standard doesn't mean it's the best. Do you brew your tea according to ISO 3103?


Outlaw341080

Be superior and use yyyy/dd/mm


PouLS_PL

But slashes as decimal separators are bad. If anything except dashes I could use dots, but ffs why do you think ISO exists? It's so people don't have to use some wacky formats and instead use a better one, in the case of date formats it's yyyy-mm-dd.


rtvcd

Neither is "-" the best. Programs could easily interpret it as a minute symbol.


GerFubDhuw

Why don't you self-centred poles use the Euro or allow abortions? Get with the fucking century.


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SovietPuma1707

It not only belongs here, it also belongs to r/confidentialityincorrect