4 ms·

- Unambiguous The problem is that it is not unambiguous. If you see 2023-03-02 in the wild there will be people who assume it is 3rd Feb. Please correct me i

- Unambiguous The problem is that it is not unambiguous. If you see 2023-03-02 in the wild there will be people who assume it is 3rd Feb. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Moru 3y ago
Can't resist that challenge :-) You are wrong. Noone would assume YYYY-MM-DD would be YYYY-DD-MM. Why would they? Biggest, smaller, smallest unit. After that comes the time with Hour, Minute, Second. Again Biggest, smaller, smallest unit.
- manuelmoreale 3y ago
  I mean, why would anyone have a problem with DD MM YYYY by the same reasoning? It’s smallest, bigger, biggest after all and yet the problem is well known. Saying “No one would assume” is only reasonable if you decide to ignore how human beings behave.
  - Moru 3y ago
    Variants exists for MM/DD/YYYY and DD/MM/YYYY (medium, smallest, biggest). No variant exists for YYYY-MM-DD, nothing to confuse. The international standard is pretty old by now, I learned it as a child. When sorting, the year is most important. Instead of everything published on the first in each month ending up at the start of the list, you get everything published today at the top. 1/1/2039 1/1/2038 1/1/2002 1/2/1970 1/2/2025
    - manuelmoreale 3y ago
      I honestly don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. A variant does exist and it is YYYY-DD-MM. Is it a reasonable one? No. Do people in the real world only do reasonable things? Also no. If you write “2023-02-03” you can be certain that a >0% of humans will read that as March 2 2023 because that’s what humans do. And just to be clear, Where I live we do DD-MM-YYYY and as a dev I’m absolutely on board with YYYY-MM-DD.
      - sshine 3y ago
        > A variant does exist and it is YYYY-DD-MM. But it’s not being used by anyone! It’s just a possible permutations, not in cultural use. I could imagine two kinds of wrong reasoning that would lead to misinterpret YYYY-MM-DD: An American who, in spite of being used to read dates aloud (05-01 = May 1st) decides that since the year comes first, the whole sequence is probably in reverse. A European who, in spite of being used to a logical ordering, decided that since it unusually starts with the year, maybe it’s an American date. I can imagine those mistakes being made. I also think they are very unlikely to happen, and vastly less likely than Americans who read European dates and literally can’t tell, or vice versa. The only widely used date format that does not have a competing interpretation is YYYY-MM-DD. For that reason alone, it is less ambiguous.
      - piva00 3y ago
        > I honestly don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. A variant does exist and it is YYYY-DD-MM. Is it a reasonable one? No. Do people in the real world only do reasonable things? Also no. Can you provide an example of a country/nation/population that uses YYYY-DD-MM as their standard date format?

- Unambiguous The problem is that it is not unambiguous. If you see 2023-03-02 in the wild there will be people who assume it is 3rd Feb. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Moru 3y ago

Can't resist that challenge :-) You are wrong. Noone would assume YYYY-MM-DD would be YYYY-DD-MM. Why would they? Biggest, smaller, smallest unit. After that comes the time with Hour, Minute, Second. Again Biggest, smaller, smallest unit.

manuelmoreale 3y ago
I mean, why would anyone have a problem with DD MM YYYY by the same reasoning? It’s smallest, bigger, biggest after all and yet the problem is well known. Saying “No one would assume” is only reasonable if you decide to ignore how human beings behave.
- Moru 3y ago
  Variants exists for MM/DD/YYYY and DD/MM/YYYY (medium, smallest, biggest). No variant exists for YYYY-MM-DD, nothing to confuse. The international standard is pretty old by now, I learned it as a child. When sorting, the year is most important. Instead of everything published on the first in each month ending up at the start of the list, you get everything published today at the top. 1/1/2039 1/1/2038 1/1/2002 1/2/1970 1/2/2025
  - manuelmoreale 3y ago
    I honestly don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. A variant does exist and it is YYYY-DD-MM. Is it a reasonable one? No. Do people in the real world only do reasonable things? Also no. If you write “2023-02-03” you can be certain that a >0% of humans will read that as March 2 2023 because that’s what humans do. And just to be clear, Where I live we do DD-MM-YYYY and as a dev I’m absolutely on board with YYYY-MM-DD.
    - sshine 3y ago
      > A variant does exist and it is YYYY-DD-MM. But it’s not being used by anyone! It’s just a possible permutations, not in cultural use. I could imagine two kinds of wrong reasoning that would lead to misinterpret YYYY-MM-DD: An American who, in spite of being used to read dates aloud (05-01 = May 1st) decides that since the year comes first, the whole sequence is probably in reverse. A European who, in spite of being used to a logical ordering, decided that since it unusually starts with the year, maybe it’s an American date. I can imagine those mistakes being made. I also think they are very unlikely to happen, and vastly less likely than Americans who read European dates and literally can’t tell, or vice versa. The only widely used date format that does not have a competing interpretation is YYYY-MM-DD. For that reason alone, it is less ambiguous.
    - piva00 3y ago
      > I honestly don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. A variant does exist and it is YYYY-DD-MM. Is it a reasonable one? No. Do people in the real world only do reasonable things? Also no. Can you provide an example of a country/nation/population that uses YYYY-DD-MM as their standard date format?