3 ms·

While I got also shocked at first by Go's time formatting, is by far the easiest to learn and memorize once you get it. The argument from the issue https://git

by vruiz 12y ago

While I got also shocked at first by Go's time formatting, is by far the easiest to learn and memorize once you get it. The argument from the issue https://github.com/golang/go/issues/444 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/444 > It would be much easier to port preexisting code if you could just copy your time formats over. It's not really much of an argument, since transforming the sprintf format to Go is a trivial as printing an specific date.

DAddYE 12y ago
Nah, parsing a date is a thing that you do usually (depends on your job) like 1 every 2/3 months at best. Every time I have to pick up the docs because Is day the 1st or month the 1st? Ms and Ns which number? Timezone? I think that the decision of golang to use this way is really unfortunate and yet more lazy than people that don't want to learn yet another (useless) thing.
chimeracoder 12y ago
> While I got also shocked at first by Go's time formatting, is by far the easiest to learn and memorize once you get it. I completely agree. I've used strftime and the like for years, and I still can't remember %m vs %M without thinking twice about it, at which point I usually just look at the docs to make sure I'm not making a mistake. By contrast, as soon as I learned the "trick"[0] behind the canonical date in Go, I had it committed to memory, and I haven't needed to look it up once since. YMMV, but personally, I'd much rather write "Jan" when I want a three-character month and "January" when I want a full month than try to remember that the former is %a and the latter is %A (...or is it the other way around? Time to check... again!) [0] http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants
- deathanatos 12y ago
  > I still can't remember %m vs %M without thinking twice about it The time component is "%H:%M:%S" — it's all capitals, and I always think "her majesty's ship" when I type it for some odd reason. At any rate, that's how I remember it. Once I work out that time component, then the date falls into place: "%m-%d-%Y". But yes, strftime's formatting strings aren't memorable. (I'm also a server-side engineer, so I active try to avoid formatting dates into anything other than ISO-8601…)
- Aissen 12y ago
  > By contrast, as soon as I learned the "trick" http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants Since MST is GMT-0700, the reference time can be thought of as 01/02 03:04:05PM '06 -0700 Such sadness. Using a reversed month/year date as a "reference" when we have ISO 8601. Much american-centrism. Otherwise I like the trick, but I'm not sure it scales to locale-specific time formats (whereas strftime does a bit with %aAbBxX).
  - burntsushi 12y ago
    The line right above that one is the first cited reference format: Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 MST 2006
    - Aissen 12y ago
      I know, I'm talking about the mnemonic used to remember this date.
  - tracker1 12y ago
    I tend to prefer ISO-style dates/times myself... and unless the date+time is tied to a location+event (and not always then), store/transmit as UTC. This leads to far fewer headaches in the long run.

by vruiz 12y ago

DAddYE 12y ago

Nah, parsing a date is a thing that you do usually (depends on your job) like 1 every 2/3 months at best. Every time I have to pick up the docs because Is day the 1st or month the 1st? Ms and Ns which number? Timezone? I think that the decision of golang to use this way is really unfortunate and yet more lazy than people that don't want to learn yet another (useless) thing.

chimeracoder 12y ago

> While I got also shocked at first by Go's time formatting, is by far the easiest to learn and memorize once you get it. I completely agree. I've used strftime and the like for years, and I still can't remember %m vs %M without thinking twice about it, at which point I usually just look at the docs to make sure I'm not making a mistake. By contrast, as soon as I learned the "trick"[0] behind the canonical date in Go, I had it committed to memory, and I haven't needed to look it up once since. YMMV, but personally, I'd much rather write "Jan" when I want a three-character month and "January" when I want a full month than try to remember that the former is %a and the latter is %A (...or is it the other way around? Time to check... again!) [0] http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants

deathanatos 12y ago
> I still can't remember %m vs %M without thinking twice about it The time component is "%H:%M:%S" — it's all capitals, and I always think "her majesty's ship" when I type it for some odd reason. At any rate, that's how I remember it. Once I work out that time component, then the date falls into place: "%m-%d-%Y". But yes, strftime's formatting strings aren't memorable. (I'm also a server-side engineer, so I active try to avoid formatting dates into anything other than ISO-8601…)
Aissen 12y ago
> By contrast, as soon as I learned the "trick" http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants http://golang.org/pkg/time/#pkg-constants Since MST is GMT-0700, the reference time can be thought of as 01/02 03:04:05PM '06 -0700 Such sadness. Using a reversed month/year date as a "reference" when we have ISO 8601. Much american-centrism. Otherwise I like the trick, but I'm not sure it scales to locale-specific time formats (whereas strftime does a bit with %aAbBxX).
- burntsushi 12y ago
  The line right above that one is the first cited reference format: Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 MST 2006
  - Aissen 12y ago
    I know, I'm talking about the mnemonic used to remember this date.
- tracker1 12y ago
  I tend to prefer ISO-style dates/times myself... and unless the date+time is tied to a location+event (and not always then), store/transmit as UTC. This leads to far fewer headaches in the long run.