5 ms·
The first time you zero-padded a year to five digits, I thought it was an accident, but there's two more instances of it. Why do you write 1983 as 01983?
by chungy 4y ago
The first time you zero-padded a year to five digits, I thought it was an accident, but there's two more instances of it. Why do you write 1983 as 01983?
- dcminter 4y agoProbably due to this: https://longnow.org/ https://longnow.org/ Personally I think it's a harmless but also not useful affectation (but I also think our chances of making it into the 10,000s as anything still using equivalent dates are slim at best).
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoIt's not harmless. 1) It's annoying. 2) It's off-topic - this isn't an article about the long now, or about dating systems. 3) It's inefficient to write dates not in the standard format - it makes everyone waste mental energy trying to figure out how to parse it. The third point is especially bad for this article, where in context, the assumption should be that 0xxxx is octal, which isn't what he's actually doing at all. So the upshot is that, rather than efficiently communicate what he's trying to say on this topic, he'd rather grind is axe on an unrelated topic. His choice, I guess, but I think it's a bad one. And an unfortunate one - he's got really good information on this topic, and his choice has hijacked us into talking about his date format. And, thinking about it, it's not really the "long now". It's more like the "medium now". If it were the long now, he'd have several more zeroes in front.
- kragen 4y agothe degree to which you are projecting your own antisocial behavior onto me is astounding i decline to take responsibility for your emotions i would appreciate it if you would stop harassing people because you don't like the date format they use, their haircut, or their clothes
- cafeinux 4y agoDespite the fact that they've got a point, in my opinion (which I won't try to impose onto others, be reassured), I don't how it could considered harassing. He wrote one comment, that's all. Also, that comment didn't talk about haircuts or clothes, and I don't see how they could be seen as antisocial through that comment.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoThank you. But in fairness to kragen, I have complained about his writing dates that way before. He might at least feel harassed.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoAntisocial? If you do something in public, I can complain about it in public. If the complaining can be antisocial, so can the doing be antisocial. So think well before you throw that charge at me.
- userbinator 4y agowhere in context, the assumption should be that 0xxxx is octal That's what I thought it was too. This convention carried over into C and its derivatives today.
- kragen 4y agoamusingly 8 and 9 would continue to be accepted as octal digits by the c (or b) compiler until ansi c forbid them a priori, though, '01982' is not very likely to be intended as octal either
- billpg 4y agoYou'd hate the Holocene Calendar then. (This year is the year 12023.)
- rahen 4y agoThat's a bit like his signature but it's also fairly annoying, it doubles the time required to interpret the number as a year, and I usually have to read the number twice.
- chungy 4y agoThat's the main reason I asked. It took longer than normal just to read a date, and it apparently has no useful benefit (yes I saw the side-comment about the "Long Now").