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Yes, I have been doing software development in Japan for the past decade. Of course you are right that no sane person would contemplate this calendar for any p
by veidr 8y ago
Yes, I have been doing software development in Japan for the past decade.
Of course you are right that no sane person would contemplate this calendar for any purpose other than user-facing display, and even then only where it is absolutely required.
But the insane WTF thing is that it does still seem to be widely required on any kind of financial document. Expense reports, salary statements, that kind of thing. All my banks use this format (and also SJIS text encoding when I download my data (T_T)...)
There are also lots of internal processes^W^W Excel spreadsheets in active use that expect these values so I've seen more than one program that converts 2013 to "H.25"... and it's literally impossible to represent a future date, since we don't know when the emperor might die, even if we have a projected abdication date.
I can't be too smug about it, since I'm American (miles and feet, anybody?) but it is... objectively non-optimal.
- pwim 8y agoInterestingly, sometimes the system is used for future dates. For instance, my drivers license expires in September of H.31, which I guess will never happen now.
- samatman 8y agoDoes this imply that the driver's license becomes invalid and must be replaced with one in the new date system? Real question
- tonysdg 8y agoOr -- perhaps more intriguingly -- given that the date in question will never occur, is it valid until the end of time? Philosophically it's a rather fun question, but practically they'll probably just honor it until the corresponding date of the new era.
- h1d 8y agoIt will stay valid. Consider having have to replace millions and millions right after the swap, it will be chaos. The system is simply stupid, not even citizens want it.
- walrus01 8y agoCanada isn't much better re: feet, miles. Things are officially metric, but because of proximity to the US and inertia, half of everything is still standard. Buying construction supplies and consumables? All in US units. People talk about square footage of condos, buy carpet in square feet, all fasteners are in US units. But gasoline is sold by the liter. People know how tall they are in feet and inches, not cm. Everything is mixed up together.
- raverbashing 8y agoYeah I suppose they like using lbs and sqft as $/lb is smaller and sqft is a bigger number than sqm (and of course the inertia which I prefer calling "being lazy") It is definitely ridiculous
- ben_w 8y agoInteresting. UK is also weird: food is weighed in metric units, people in imperial; Drinks bought in supermarkets are measured in metric, pubs use imperial (by law in both cases, IIRC); Distances on signs can be meters or miles, both initialised as “m” (context being the only clue); fuel is sold by the litre, fuel efficiency is miles per gallon.
- mrob 8y agoBeer and cider is sold in pubs in imperial pints (bigger than US pints), but wines and spirits are sold in milliliters. See https://www.gov.uk/weights-measures-and-packaging-the-law https://www.gov.uk/weights-measures-and-packaging-the-law
- ben_w 8y agoGood point, I’d forgotten wine and beer were different. I wonder what further examples of mixed up units the UK has?
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoWell there is a tendency to still use Fahrenheit during summer like "it's in the 80s", and "it's in the 90s" this month, but most use Celcius for winters when it gets below freezing. There must be a grey area in the 50s and 60s F. Both approaches often seen in headlines. :)
- h1d 8y agoIt's sad this date system is there for no reason today. Systems never like it and neither do people. I rarely use it and it's mostly bank related but every time I do, I look it up on Google to make sure I remember the number right. This needs to be dropped.