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I mean, there is literally no way to confuse it with another date, unless you go back 100 years, when Slack didn't exist. There is no 22nd month, so we know th

I mean, there is literally no way to confuse it with another date, unless you go back 100 years, when Slack didn't exist. There is no 22nd month, so we know the 22s are the day and the year, leaving only the 2 to be the month. Is it really that difficult to parse?

johannes1234321 5y ago
> leaving only the 2 to be the day I think you meant "to be the month" there. qed■
- diarrhea 5y ago
  Beautiful.
tjoff 5y ago
I'm so tired of having to do that game every time I see a date. It is not hard, but it is quite annoying. Especially since it isn't solvable in a lot of cases, so you try to reason your way to the most realistic interpretation. It shouldn't be this hard.
- true_religion 5y ago
  It’s not really that hard. Like the imperial system, Americans just memorize how it works as children and don’t think about it anymore. Think about it like speaking a different language, except with numbers and not words.
  - dllthomas 5y ago
    The complaint isn't about the particular other order, but the fact that the order is ambiguous. In this case that doesn't matter, but often it does. Americans memorize inches and yards, and often also memorize centimeters and meters, and working with either is fine, but we're not so often faced with numbers where it might be inches or centimeters and we have to figure out which (and when we are, it's sometimes a pain - certainly a bigger pain that working with known units). Or, working with your language analogy, please go fetch me some "pasta" without knowing whether I'm speaking Italian or Polish.
    - xeromal 5y ago
      Context matters in your pasta scenario.
      - erpellan 5y ago
        Context also matters in the date parsing scenario. 11/12/22 could be several different dates depending on the context.
        xeromal 5y ago
        Yeah, and in this post, it's clear what it is.
        ldh 5y ago
        It may not have happened to you yet, but someday you'll see a date somewhere other than this post.
        xeromal 5y ago
        This honestly has me laughing.
      - dllthomas 5y ago
        Since the text itself doesn't clarify, context is the only way of resolving any of the scenarios. In each case it's usually sufficient and often not all that hard. But it's always harder than if the system in use was made explicit, and I understand the complaint (even if my annoyance at the ambiguity is quite significantly below the level where I would have complained myself, particularly in this case).
    - true_religion 5y ago
      I instinctively felt that the ambiguity ought to not truly exist, but I wanted to find some backing. According to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country … all the major predominantly English speaking counties will use mostly hyphens in the dd-mm-yyyy format. So although there is ambiguity, it’s easily resolved by picking that as the default mentally and only back tracking on failure. Now in the more general case, this whole thing feels like a lieutenant/leftenant situation. We are annoyed simply because it’s not they way that we do things in a peculiar case, when otherwise the language is fully intelligible.
  - ascar 5y ago
    > Think about it like speaking a different language The correct analogy is I don't know which language is spoken and the same words get used in multiple languages with different meaning. Now I can apply heuristics to figure it out or in some cases I can only guess.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
huhtenberg 5y ago
I just thought it was a typo.
noselasd 5y ago
That particular date is possible to understand, but the date format is not. (Is is really that fun to try to figure out what 12-11-21 means ?)
- CPLX 5y ago
  November 21, 1812 What do I win?
- lkbm 5y ago
  Is there a different post where they used this date format? None of their other incident reports even have a date in the title. Yet this one does, and in a weird format. Maybe there's something novel about the date, and it's written this was to emphasize the novelty, not to provide some vital information that happens to be excluded on every other incident report title they've posted.
bamboozled 5y ago
So we could either: a) Use a far superior date format which nearly the entire world uses by default and is better and simpler in many ways. b) Do logic when we see dates to try workout what format the date is in. Going with a seems like a no brainer...
- verve_rat 5y ago
  Especially in this scenario where you are communicating to an international audience.
burnte 5y ago
Yeah, but what about that party that I threw on 10/11/12. Did I set it for November 12, 2010, or October 11 in 2012? Or somewhen else?
brigandish 5y ago
It's a waste of effort and makes me wonder about the competence of the person who wrote it (when looking at a mangled date generally). Display dates are for humans so write the month name, then it doesn't matter what the order is. 22 Feb 22 Feb 22 22 (weird but still better) 22 22 Feb (very weird but still better) This also goes to show that 2022 is a better choice. My own personal preference - the 22nd of February 2022.

johannes1234321 5y ago

> leaving only the 2 to be the day I think you meant "to be the month" there. qed■

diarrhea 5y ago
Beautiful.

tjoff 5y ago

I'm so tired of having to do that game every time I see a date. It is not hard, but it is quite annoying. Especially since it isn't solvable in a lot of cases, so you try to reason your way to the most realistic interpretation. It shouldn't be this hard.

true_religion 5y ago
It’s not really that hard. Like the imperial system, Americans just memorize how it works as children and don’t think about it anymore. Think about it like speaking a different language, except with numbers and not words.
- dllthomas 5y ago
  The complaint isn't about the particular other order, but the fact that the order is ambiguous. In this case that doesn't matter, but often it does. Americans memorize inches and yards, and often also memorize centimeters and meters, and working with either is fine, but we're not so often faced with numbers where it might be inches or centimeters and we have to figure out which (and when we are, it's sometimes a pain - certainly a bigger pain that working with known units). Or, working with your language analogy, please go fetch me some "pasta" without knowing whether I'm speaking Italian or Polish.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    Context matters in your pasta scenario.
    - erpellan 5y ago
      Context also matters in the date parsing scenario. 11/12/22 could be several different dates depending on the context.
      - xeromal 5y ago
        Yeah, and in this post, it's clear what it is.
        ldh 5y ago
        It may not have happened to you yet, but someday you'll see a date somewhere other than this post.
        xeromal 5y ago
        This honestly has me laughing.
    - dllthomas 5y ago
      Since the text itself doesn't clarify, context is the only way of resolving any of the scenarios. In each case it's usually sufficient and often not all that hard. But it's always harder than if the system in use was made explicit, and I understand the complaint (even if my annoyance at the ambiguity is quite significantly below the level where I would have complained myself, particularly in this case).
  - true_religion 5y ago
    I instinctively felt that the ambiguity ought to not truly exist, but I wanted to find some backing. According to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country … all the major predominantly English speaking counties will use mostly hyphens in the dd-mm-yyyy format. So although there is ambiguity, it’s easily resolved by picking that as the default mentally and only back tracking on failure. Now in the more general case, this whole thing feels like a lieutenant/leftenant situation. We are annoyed simply because it’s not they way that we do things in a peculiar case, when otherwise the language is fully intelligible.
- ascar 5y ago
  > Think about it like speaking a different language The correct analogy is I don't know which language is spoken and the same words get used in multiple languages with different meaning. Now I can apply heuristics to figure it out or in some cases I can only guess.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

huhtenberg 5y ago

I just thought it was a typo.

noselasd 5y ago

That particular date is possible to understand, but the date format is not. (Is is really that fun to try to figure out what 12-11-21 means ?)

CPLX 5y ago
November 21, 1812 What do I win?
lkbm 5y ago
Is there a different post where they used this date format? None of their other incident reports even have a date in the title. Yet this one does, and in a weird format. Maybe there's something novel about the date, and it's written this was to emphasize the novelty, not to provide some vital information that happens to be excluded on every other incident report title they've posted.

bamboozled 5y ago

So we could either: a) Use a far superior date format which nearly the entire world uses by default and is better and simpler in many ways. b) Do logic when we see dates to try workout what format the date is in. Going with a seems like a no brainer...

verve_rat 5y ago
Especially in this scenario where you are communicating to an international audience.

burnte 5y ago

Yeah, but what about that party that I threw on 10/11/12. Did I set it for November 12, 2010, or October 11 in 2012? Or somewhen else?

brigandish 5y ago

It's a waste of effort and makes me wonder about the competence of the person who wrote it (when looking at a mangled date generally). Display dates are for humans so write the month name, then it doesn't matter what the order is. 22 Feb 22 Feb 22 22 (weird but still better) 22 22 Feb (very weird but still better) This also goes to show that 2022 is a better choice. My own personal preference - the 22nd of February 2022.