4 ms·

YMD is the only sane format. When you sort, you can sort by the year, followed by month and day. I do this a lot with folder names or log file names in director

YMD is the only sane format. When you sort, you can sort by the year, followed by month and day. I do this a lot with folder names or log file names in directories, file system creation/modified dates don't always match reality. e.g. a folder named 2018-01-07 is entirely readable to anyone who looks at it, but at the same time easily sorted.

kondro 8y ago
And DMY is the only sane human-readable format for LTR languages.
- raldi 8y ago
  When you write the time, do you put the minutes to the left or the right of the hour?
  - uryga 8y ago
    I think that the timescale on which humans live matters here. The year field doesn't change often, so for the everyday usecase it's kind of redundant – it's probably the current year, so specifying it first is kind of noisy[1]. But on the scale of hours, it's the minutes that are noise, because you likely care more about the hour. So I guess the most ergonomic ordering depends on the usecase. [1] This could be different if you're, say, browsing an archive. Still, if I'm looking at a thread from 2005, that context is in my head, and I don't need to be constantly reminded of that by seeing 2005-XX-YY.
    - ubernostrum 8y ago
      In English, at least, it used to be that a document such as a letter would begin with a date indicating when it was written, and then for dates ±1 month from that date would express relatively, like so: * "The 10th instant" / "10th inst." = tenth day of current month indicated in date of document * "The 10th ultimo" / "10th ult." = tenth day of month preceding the one indicated in date of document * "The 10th proximo" / "10th prox." = tenth day of month following the one indicated in date of document
- Haydos585x2 8y ago
  Arabic often writes dates and phone numbers from left to right. I can't speak for other RTL langauges but I can't see DMY being a problem for most people around the world. Ultimately, non-English speakers have to learn English to write code and if they want standardised dates across their systems they should use the standard of the language they're writing in.

kondro 8y ago

And DMY is the only sane human-readable format for LTR languages.

raldi 8y ago
When you write the time, do you put the minutes to the left or the right of the hour?
- uryga 8y ago
  I think that the timescale on which humans live matters here. The year field doesn't change often, so for the everyday usecase it's kind of redundant – it's probably the current year, so specifying it first is kind of noisy[1]. But on the scale of hours, it's the minutes that are noise, because you likely care more about the hour. So I guess the most ergonomic ordering depends on the usecase. [1] This could be different if you're, say, browsing an archive. Still, if I'm looking at a thread from 2005, that context is in my head, and I don't need to be constantly reminded of that by seeing 2005-XX-YY.
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    In English, at least, it used to be that a document such as a letter would begin with a date indicating when it was written, and then for dates ±1 month from that date would express relatively, like so: * "The 10th instant" / "10th inst." = tenth day of current month indicated in date of document * "The 10th ultimo" / "10th ult." = tenth day of month preceding the one indicated in date of document * "The 10th proximo" / "10th prox." = tenth day of month following the one indicated in date of document
Haydos585x2 8y ago
Arabic often writes dates and phone numbers from left to right. I can't speak for other RTL langauges but I can't see DMY being a problem for most people around the world. Ultimately, non-English speakers have to learn English to write code and if they want standardised dates across their systems they should use the standard of the language they're writing in.