3 ms·

Europeans have access to multiple countries, cultures, and languages, yet still complain about imperial units, date formats, "soccer," SMS, and all of the many

Europeans have access to multiple countries, cultures, and languages, yet still complain about imperial units, date formats, "soccer," SMS, and all of the many other ways in which the United States differs. It's another country. Stop being so insular.

Kwpolska 4y ago
America’s insistence on weird date and unit formats has a negative effect on software and resources used all around the world.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  Developers aren't using M/D/Y. This is a straw man.
  - SonicScrub 4y ago
    Developers? Maybe but even if we accept that all developers pay close attention to their date formats to avoid misinterpretation errors, others who produce work within the developers workflow are certainly not doing so.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    For example, if your company has a splunk install for log surveillance, it has a default of M/D/Y year format for all date ranges etc, it's a bit confusing, but it has localization too of course. Developers who do devops tasks might run into this one.
  - Kwpolska 4y ago
    Developers and their APIs might not be. The user-facing software often does, and it often does not let you switch, at least not without affecting other things (such as the spelling of “colour”).
warent 4y ago
if you think there aren't Americans that also complain about these, I've got news for you.
kraussvonespy 4y ago
...
- vehemenz 4y ago
  There are more factors of 12 than of 10. This makes some imperial units more practical for certain types of things that involve mental math or quick calculations. Fahrenheit is higher resolution than Celsius for weather/climate measurements.
  - kraussvonespy 4y ago
    ...
- freedomben 4y ago
  > There is no justification for it other than the general US contrarian attitude of "you're not the boss of me". I'm a proponent of the metric system, but that's either a wild straw man or very lazy thinking. An obvious justification (which has lots of merit) is "I've been using imperial all my life and it's what I know, what I think in, etc." Changing systems would be very disruptive for a lot of people. IMHO that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, but it is something that should at least be acknowledged before a massive forced upheaval of a system. Just thinking about driving for a minute, even little things like the speedometers in cars being primarily mph, millions of miles of mileposts all around the country that would need removing and changing. Every road sign with miles on it, etc. Those things are a little more than just "you're not the boss of me"
  - kraussvonespy 4y ago
    ...
SonicScrub 4y ago
It's pretty silly when people complain about different tastes in subjective areas, such as music, architecture, pronunciation, food or other cultural differences. However, when it comes to methods of technical communication such as time formats or measurement units the complaints have little to do with subjective preferences, and more to do with real world consequences of maintaining unintuitive systems. Technical language should be clear, precise and uniform. That's what it's for. Insisting on maintaining different standards causes real headaches for everyone who has to deal with those systems, and sometimes can cause catastrophic errors. It has little to do with preference, and much more to do with practicality.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  It's okay if there are differences. Arab-speaking countries use RTL, which causes huge issues everywhere. We don't tell them to change their language, we just adapt to it. Software developers are not using M/D/Y anyway, and everyone else who deals with international business should already understand the difference. When I see a non-American date, I assume D/M/Y. It shouldn't be that hard to expect supposedly cosmopolitan Europeans to do the same.
  - SonicScrub 4y ago
    > Software developers are not using M/D/Y anyway, and everyone else who deals with international business should already understand the difference That's a pretty major assumption that does not jive with experience. Date formatting inconsistentices were the bane of my existence in my last role. Maintaining clean databases that has input streams that came from Canada, the US and Poland constantly caused problems. Yes the company had standards of how to properly do things. Were those standards followed? Not all the time. Especially when data sources came from 2nd and 3rd tier downstream suppliers. Did people try their best? Yeah, for the most part. But that doesn't prevent mistakes.

Kwpolska 4y ago

America’s insistence on weird date and unit formats has a negative effect on software and resources used all around the world.

vehemenz 4y ago
Developers aren't using M/D/Y. This is a straw man.
- SonicScrub 4y ago
  Developers? Maybe but even if we accept that all developers pay close attention to their date formats to avoid misinterpretation errors, others who produce work within the developers workflow are certainly not doing so.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  For example, if your company has a splunk install for log surveillance, it has a default of M/D/Y year format for all date ranges etc, it's a bit confusing, but it has localization too of course. Developers who do devops tasks might run into this one.
- Kwpolska 4y ago
  Developers and their APIs might not be. The user-facing software often does, and it often does not let you switch, at least not without affecting other things (such as the spelling of “colour”).

warent 4y ago

if you think there aren't Americans that also complain about these, I've got news for you.

kraussvonespy 4y ago

...

vehemenz 4y ago
There are more factors of 12 than of 10. This makes some imperial units more practical for certain types of things that involve mental math or quick calculations. Fahrenheit is higher resolution than Celsius for weather/climate measurements.
- kraussvonespy 4y ago
  ...
freedomben 4y ago
> There is no justification for it other than the general US contrarian attitude of "you're not the boss of me". I'm a proponent of the metric system, but that's either a wild straw man or very lazy thinking. An obvious justification (which has lots of merit) is "I've been using imperial all my life and it's what I know, what I think in, etc." Changing systems would be very disruptive for a lot of people. IMHO that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, but it is something that should at least be acknowledged before a massive forced upheaval of a system. Just thinking about driving for a minute, even little things like the speedometers in cars being primarily mph, millions of miles of mileposts all around the country that would need removing and changing. Every road sign with miles on it, etc. Those things are a little more than just "you're not the boss of me"
- kraussvonespy 4y ago
  ...

SonicScrub 4y ago

It's pretty silly when people complain about different tastes in subjective areas, such as music, architecture, pronunciation, food or other cultural differences. However, when it comes to methods of technical communication such as time formats or measurement units the complaints have little to do with subjective preferences, and more to do with real world consequences of maintaining unintuitive systems. Technical language should be clear, precise and uniform. That's what it's for. Insisting on maintaining different standards causes real headaches for everyone who has to deal with those systems, and sometimes can cause catastrophic errors. It has little to do with preference, and much more to do with practicality.

vehemenz 4y ago
It's okay if there are differences. Arab-speaking countries use RTL, which causes huge issues everywhere. We don't tell them to change their language, we just adapt to it. Software developers are not using M/D/Y anyway, and everyone else who deals with international business should already understand the difference. When I see a non-American date, I assume D/M/Y. It shouldn't be that hard to expect supposedly cosmopolitan Europeans to do the same.
- SonicScrub 4y ago
  > Software developers are not using M/D/Y anyway, and everyone else who deals with international business should already understand the difference That's a pretty major assumption that does not jive with experience. Date formatting inconsistentices were the bane of my existence in my last role. Maintaining clean databases that has input streams that came from Canada, the US and Poland constantly caused problems. Yes the company had standards of how to properly do things. Were those standards followed? Not all the time. Especially when data sources came from 2nd and 3rd tier downstream suppliers. Did people try their best? Yeah, for the most part. But that doesn't prevent mistakes.