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> It’s pretty convenient as the time periods uses the format YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD and I think is easier to mentally parse than MM/DD/YYYY-MM/DD/YYYY Especiall
by chriswarbo 4y ago
> It’s pretty convenient as the time periods uses the format YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD and I think is easier to mentally parse than MM/DD/YYYY-MM/DD/YYYY
Especially for those outside the USA!
- ethbr0 4y agoAs someone who grew up in the US, it's still bizarre as a programmer to have a mixed-significance ordering (MM-DD-YYYY) instead of any consistently-endian ordering (DD-MM-YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD). Out of curiosity, in what order do Europeans verbally say full dates with month names? Or does it vary by language?
- lawn 4y agoIn Sweden we say 20th June, 2022 and we even use a "DD/MM -YY" shorthand when signing documents for instance, although YYYY-MM-DD is also common and "the more correct".
- ulkis 4y agoExcept on food where EU mandates DD-MM-YY(YY).
- kseistrup 4y agoDenmark: The Nth $month $year. E.g., “Den 20. juni 2022” (lit.: the 20th June 2022).
- karencarits 4y agoThe same applies to Norway
- jiehong 4y agoIt does vary by language, but Roman languages (French, Spanish, Italian, etc.) say the 4th of July. Same in German. In Polish, it’s the same, except for official matters since 2002, which now follows ISO8601. Even in the UK they commonly say the 5th of May, and not May, the 5th (but it does happen). I can’t talk about other languages.
- chriswarbo 4y ago> not May, the 5th (but it does happen) The only time I see this is in the UK is on movie posters/trailer, e.g. "In cinemas May 5th", which I assume is due to re-using the US material. PS: 5th of May is a degenerate example, since it's 05/05 regardless of ordering PPS: 5th of May is also my birthday ;)
- codetrotter 4y agoEuropean here. When I state my date of birth I state it as “7th of October 1990”. When a date is within the current year I state it as for example “27th of June”. If weekday matters, and specific date is still relevant I’ll say for example “Monday 27th of June”. I might also simply say “Sunday last week”, “Monday next week”, “Monday at the end of next month”, etc. Likewise I might say “a couple of weeks ago”, “last week”, “a few days ago”, “in under two weeks”, etc. Depends on context. When including a date in a file name I prefer YYYY-MM-DD for date. When using dates in a directory hierarchy I’ll have years on the top level, with months within them and dates within those. Sometimes I might use a format like YYYY-mm-ddTHHMMz_s in a file name. For example “something_2022-06-20T1722+0000_1655745728_more_text.tbz”
- mtoddsmith 4y agoYYYY-DD-MM as a folder / filename does not sort correctly. Not a fan. I much prefer YYYY-MM-DD for its sorting behavior.
- codetrotter 4y agoSorry, that was a typo. I meant to say YYYY-MM-DD. Edited now.
- eurasiantiger 4y agoImportant note: while a datestamp like YYYY-MM-DD does sort correctly, a datetime stamp such as YYYY-MM-DDThh-mm-ss does not because of DST and negative leap seconds.
- elromulous 4y agoWhere in Europe? I imagine this might vary by language / region. And could even differ in official use vs vernacular. And ofc, the mixed order is the inferior option.
- codetrotter 4y agoNorway
- irrational 4y agoThese replies are fascinating. When saying a date I always say month day year. I hadn’t considered that this might be cultural.
- ethbr0 4y agoAs an American, same. I was wondering where the weird month-first came from and figured it might have been verbal first, then codified in writing.
- irrational 4y agoAt first I wondered if it had something to do with word order in English, but it sounds like other English speaking countries don’t follow this pattern.
- Tagbert 4y agoDon’t currently “follow this pattern”. US English has several grammatical and pronunciation characteristics that were common in UK English about 300 years ago. Including being largely (but not totally) rhotic.
- frutiger 4y agoI moved to the US from the UK a little over 10 years ago. The numeric month and day of my birthday happen to be the same. For this anecdote lets assume it’s 01/01/1970. When medical staff ask me for my date of birth, I’ll say “1st Jan 1970”. They’ll reply asking “Sorry, Jan 1st?” And I’ll say “yeah”. This blew my (programmer) mind. Over the years I’ve rewired my brain to say “Jan 1st 1970” and avoid the extra round trip.
- garmain 4y agoIn German, Dutch I'll use "twenty June twenty-twentytwo". In English "twentieth of June twenty-twentytwo
- dividedbyzero 4y agoWould you actually say "zwanzig Juni" in German? I'd expect "zwanzigster Juni", i.e. 20th June.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y agoIt varies by context: sometimes I'll say "20th June", sometimes "June 20th". There's no rhyme or reason.
- blowski 4y agoThere isn’t a standard. Most individuals don’t have a consistent standard, let alone languages.
- rzwitserloot 4y agoGermanic (Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian) languages just say "10 october", they'd never say "October 10th". Before we get our 'english is so stupid!!!' hat on, in many of these (e.g. Dutch and German), the number '87' is pronounced 'seven-and-eighty' ('zevenentachtig' - 'zeven en tachtig' - seven and eighty), which is stupid. Languages are weird). Same for the romance ones: It's just "Quatorze juillet" - 14th of July (Bastille day). English is the weird one, but not that weird, "7th of october" is not much more complicated to say than "October 7th".
- Terretta 4y agoAbout that romance 87 … French in France: four twenties seven French in Switzerland: eighty seven (octante sept)
- bewuethr 4y agoSwiss French is rather "huitante", and also that not in all regions ("quatre-vingt" in the rest), see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_de_Suisse#Nombres https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_de_Suisse#Nombre...
- pronik 4y agoFrench is actually not so weird if you think about what a "score" is in English. Gettysburg address literally begins with "four score and seven years ago", which equals to 87.
- matheusmoreira 4y agoIn portuguese people say "vinte de junho de dois mil e vinte dois", meaning "twenty of june of two thousand twenty two". The first few days of the month are ordinal: people say "primeiro de janeiro" meaning "first of january". Japanese uses a neat system akin to YYYY-MM-DD. 2022-06-20 becomes ２０２１年６月２０日 meaning "2021 year 6 month 20 day". Really nice to read. Actual pronunciation is very irregular though, especially days of the month where about half of them are irregular.
- vivganes 4y ago> Out of curiosity, in what order do Europeans verbally say full dates with month names? Or does it vary by language? I am from India and I say "21st of June 2022"
- jmiskovic 4y agoI really hate watching historical documentaries where they spell out dates with day->month->year. If the intention is to teach, then the year is most important number and all other information is to be catalogued in context of broadest time period. The DD-MM-YYYY forces viewers to keep the whole date in their heads before it can be parsed and understood. The "Algorithms to Live By" book has a good name for this: computational kindness. We should strive to reduce cognitive burden. The bigger the audience, the more effort should go into making data digestible. Unfortunately the established date standard goes against it. The other problem is mixing endianness: the date information uses little endian, while numbers themselves are spelled out in big endian. The American MM-DD-YYYY on the other hand... I don't know what they were thinking.
- AdrianB1 4y agoInteresting thing I learned about historical battles: the most important part of the date is the season. In my country there were no battles during winter, early spring and late autumn, most were from April to September. It does not mean month is more important than year.
- AdrianB1 4y agoThe one difference by language is the day: some languages say 1st or 7th, some just 1 or 7. In mine, except for 1st we use the day number, full reading is "day month, year" where the comma is a small extra space.
- OJFord 4y agoVerbally in the same order as written in BrE - 22 June. (Historically '22nd inst. [instant]'.) 'June twenty-second' ordering verbally is as distanctly American (not to say you don't hear it, as with many Americanizms) as it is in writing.
- thedougd 4y agoIn life I use the latter, but on computers I try to exclusively use the former. YYYY-MM-DD sorts the same lexicographically or chronologically.