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The whole date internationalization thing should be deprecated. Everybody smart enough to use a computer is smart enough to understand ISO 8601 (which is by al

The whole date internationalization thing should be deprecated. Everybody smart enough to use a computer is smart enough to understand ISO 8601 (which is by all means better than any other human-readable way to record a date). I also hate the fact some countries use comma instead of the decimal point (which causes problems often). Keeping these differences alive doesn't seem to serve any good purpose. These things should really be made a part of the metric system.

jeroenhd 7y ago
You're either greatly overestimating the literacy of many computer users or you're choosing to apply some kind of "intelligence filter" to your code if you're serious about this. People like reading nice dates and nice words. They're easy to parse for human brains. Sure, "1e6" is nice and short but typing out "a million" is much easier to understand. Giving someone a notification that they have an appointment "next Thursday (2020-02-27)" is a lot clearer than just stating the date. It saves people from having to look up the current date and doing mental math to find out how much time is in between those dates. Nit everyone is a programmer and not everyone likes short and concise data notation. Date localisation exists for a reason and it's not because people like to make developers' lives impossible. Use ISO8601 because of its technical superiority if you want, but don't think it's the final answer to the date/time problem.
- qwerty456127 7y ago
  > People like reading nice dates How is 2020-02-27not nice? > Sure, "1e6" is nice and short but typing out "a million" is much easier to understand IMHO 1 000 000 is the easiest (sure the 1e6 from is better for bigger numbers). As for "a million" I don't understand anything bigger described this way (billions, trillions etc) - tell me 1 trillion and 2 billions and I have absolutely no idea how much is that. It wouldn't be a problem for me to memorize unless there were not the long and the short system as I rarely have a clue which one is being used. > "next Thursday (2020-02-27)" is a lot clearer than just stating the date Sure, but something like 02.27,2020 is no way better than 2020-02-27, it's just a matter of habit particularly easy to change.
  - jeroenhd 7y ago
    > How is 2020-02-27 not nice? It's an uncommon way to denote date. If you're used to the usual date notations (day before month) you can easily get confused with dates like 2020-03-04. Sure, the first number is the year, but what do the other two numbers mean? Maybe the order is clear if you're used to the American way of denoting dates (month before day) but only a small minority of people worldwide use that. Habits are not easy to change and changing them gets harder as you get older. Microsoft changing the icon of the start menu got me many questions from people anywhere between 20 and 80 back when I did tech support. These people were smart enough to use a computer yet a tiny change confused them. When Windows changed their start menu to something new, people didn't want to change the way they did things and tools like Classic Start was born. If clicking an icon on a computer is too hard a habit to change, how do you think telling the world to change their date notation will go down? And why should we all go do stuff differently because someone has come up with a way that makes lexicographical sorting of dates possible? Furthermore, "next Thursday" is already part of internationalisation code (Thursday needs to be translated and the concept of what the literal translation of "next Thursday" means changes between languages and cultures). Why not also put the full date into the correct locale as well while you're at it? Just because I think metric measurements are superior to imperial measurements doesn't mean I don't need to translate those units of measurement to American when I publish an app that uses them. Anyone capable of counting to ten can understand the metric system but that doesn't mean I can get away with providing metric-only information and input fields for everything. There's a difference between what academics and engineers use and what the general public uses. If you don't make a general product for the general public then you don't make a very good product.
    - jiggawatts 7y ago
      > It's an uncommon way to denote date. It's a very common way to denote date, and you would have to be borderline retarded to not understand it. > If you're used to the usual date notations (day before month) This is not usual at all! You've just handwaved away the #1 stupidity of localized date formats: the special flower that is the United States and their crazy M/D/Y shorthand that means that nobody can ever parse these "common" date formats unambiguously, anywhere. Not humans, not computers, not even hyper intelligent AIs of the future. Critical information is being thrown away, and can never ever be recovered. > Habits What habits? I just assume that any site showing me a date like 3/4/5 could be either the 4th of March or April 3rd. It's like a Quantum Date, in a superposition of possibilities. That's the habit I'm currently used to. If you're not confused, then you probably live in the US, which is a 4.25% minority of the world population, so it's a small group that I think we all agree can be safely ignored. > And why should we all go do stuff differently because someone has come up with a way that makes lexicographical sorting of dates possible? Why would you not "do stuff" when as a bonus you get trivially sortable dates on top of having unambiguous dates that both humans and computers can interpret correctly? Doesn't it drive you crazy that randomly things just don't work because some twat left a Windows servers on en-US so that CSV export or import just shreds data? Or if you're in the states, you get data sent to you and you can't figure out why there are sales in the future? Doesn't it drive you crazy that when you see a security hotfix saying 3/4/5 you have no idea if it's next month or the month after? > Clicking an icon on a computer is too hard a habit to change It isn't, people just like to whine. One of the few smart CIOs once told me: Don't worry about the icon changing. Don't even bother telling anyone. We're not paying $100K to people too retarded to do their job because the colour of the icon changed. > metric-only information and input fields for everything. This actually happens all the time, and people figured it out without their brains leaking out of their ears. What nobody can get used to is a single number on a webpage showing a measurement without units. If I tell you to buy a "5" screw or dig a "7 deep hole", you would have no clue what that means. You can't possibly. No matter what. A date in a format like 3/4/5 is exactly the same thing: meaningless numbers without units or context. A date in the format of 2020-04-03 or 2020-03-04 have only one interpretation. > There's a difference between what academics and engineers use and what the general public uses. Yeah well, academics came up with the Metric system and 95.75% of the world population loves it.
asjw 7y ago
> I also hate the fact some countries use comma instead of the decimal point You mean the great majority of them, including official math notation?

jeroenhd 7y ago

You're either greatly overestimating the literacy of many computer users or you're choosing to apply some kind of "intelligence filter" to your code if you're serious about this. People like reading nice dates and nice words. They're easy to parse for human brains. Sure, "1e6" is nice and short but typing out "a million" is much easier to understand. Giving someone a notification that they have an appointment "next Thursday (2020-02-27)" is a lot clearer than just stating the date. It saves people from having to look up the current date and doing mental math to find out how much time is in between those dates. Nit everyone is a programmer and not everyone likes short and concise data notation. Date localisation exists for a reason and it's not because people like to make developers' lives impossible. Use ISO8601 because of its technical superiority if you want, but don't think it's the final answer to the date/time problem.

qwerty456127 7y ago
> People like reading nice dates How is 2020-02-27not nice? > Sure, "1e6" is nice and short but typing out "a million" is much easier to understand IMHO 1 000 000 is the easiest (sure the 1e6 from is better for bigger numbers). As for "a million" I don't understand anything bigger described this way (billions, trillions etc) - tell me 1 trillion and 2 billions and I have absolutely no idea how much is that. It wouldn't be a problem for me to memorize unless there were not the long and the short system as I rarely have a clue which one is being used. > "next Thursday (2020-02-27)" is a lot clearer than just stating the date Sure, but something like 02.27,2020 is no way better than 2020-02-27, it's just a matter of habit particularly easy to change.
- jeroenhd 7y ago
  > How is 2020-02-27 not nice? It's an uncommon way to denote date. If you're used to the usual date notations (day before month) you can easily get confused with dates like 2020-03-04. Sure, the first number is the year, but what do the other two numbers mean? Maybe the order is clear if you're used to the American way of denoting dates (month before day) but only a small minority of people worldwide use that. Habits are not easy to change and changing them gets harder as you get older. Microsoft changing the icon of the start menu got me many questions from people anywhere between 20 and 80 back when I did tech support. These people were smart enough to use a computer yet a tiny change confused them. When Windows changed their start menu to something new, people didn't want to change the way they did things and tools like Classic Start was born. If clicking an icon on a computer is too hard a habit to change, how do you think telling the world to change their date notation will go down? And why should we all go do stuff differently because someone has come up with a way that makes lexicographical sorting of dates possible? Furthermore, "next Thursday" is already part of internationalisation code (Thursday needs to be translated and the concept of what the literal translation of "next Thursday" means changes between languages and cultures). Why not also put the full date into the correct locale as well while you're at it? Just because I think metric measurements are superior to imperial measurements doesn't mean I don't need to translate those units of measurement to American when I publish an app that uses them. Anyone capable of counting to ten can understand the metric system but that doesn't mean I can get away with providing metric-only information and input fields for everything. There's a difference between what academics and engineers use and what the general public uses. If you don't make a general product for the general public then you don't make a very good product.
  - jiggawatts 7y ago
    > It's an uncommon way to denote date. It's a very common way to denote date, and you would have to be borderline retarded to not understand it. > If you're used to the usual date notations (day before month) This is not usual at all! You've just handwaved away the #1 stupidity of localized date formats: the special flower that is the United States and their crazy M/D/Y shorthand that means that nobody can ever parse these "common" date formats unambiguously, anywhere. Not humans, not computers, not even hyper intelligent AIs of the future. Critical information is being thrown away, and can never ever be recovered. > Habits What habits? I just assume that any site showing me a date like 3/4/5 could be either the 4th of March or April 3rd. It's like a Quantum Date, in a superposition of possibilities. That's the habit I'm currently used to. If you're not confused, then you probably live in the US, which is a 4.25% minority of the world population, so it's a small group that I think we all agree can be safely ignored. > And why should we all go do stuff differently because someone has come up with a way that makes lexicographical sorting of dates possible? Why would you not "do stuff" when as a bonus you get trivially sortable dates on top of having unambiguous dates that both humans and computers can interpret correctly? Doesn't it drive you crazy that randomly things just don't work because some twat left a Windows servers on en-US so that CSV export or import just shreds data? Or if you're in the states, you get data sent to you and you can't figure out why there are sales in the future? Doesn't it drive you crazy that when you see a security hotfix saying 3/4/5 you have no idea if it's next month or the month after? > Clicking an icon on a computer is too hard a habit to change It isn't, people just like to whine. One of the few smart CIOs once told me: Don't worry about the icon changing. Don't even bother telling anyone. We're not paying $100K to people too retarded to do their job because the colour of the icon changed. > metric-only information and input fields for everything. This actually happens all the time, and people figured it out without their brains leaking out of their ears. What nobody can get used to is a single number on a webpage showing a measurement without units. If I tell you to buy a "5" screw or dig a "7 deep hole", you would have no clue what that means. You can't possibly. No matter what. A date in a format like 3/4/5 is exactly the same thing: meaningless numbers without units or context. A date in the format of 2020-04-03 or 2020-03-04 have only one interpretation. > There's a difference between what academics and engineers use and what the general public uses. Yeah well, academics came up with the Metric system and 95.75% of the world population loves it.

asjw 7y ago

> I also hate the fact some countries use comma instead of the decimal point You mean the great majority of them, including official math notation?