@jackdaniel @stragu and that one results in better sorting on most default settings

@fabianhjr @stragu

Not between 1999 and 2000

It's also not strictly unambiguous with DD/MM/YY the way that YYYY-MM-DD is

@ajft @stragu To stay neutral then UTC is probably better than GMT, see https://www.timeanddate.com/time/gmt-utc-time.html ; this also avoids the AM/PM format that is just confusing, like all timezones abbreviations when they are not of the format "Continent or Country/City" (sometimes even a state in the US can have 2 legal timezones at the same time, depending on the city you are in)

@pmevzek @stragu true. old me is old and I end up saying GMT. Now don't even think about getting onto the subject of peoples' names in applications and the US-centric "christian-name, one mandatory middle name, surname"!

@kravietz @stragu I agree with both but it'll take at least 1 generation of transition.

@devurandom @stragu W3CDTF https://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime Instead of MM/DD/YYYY AND DD/MM/YYYY.

@mdhughes @stragu I'm all game with ISO-8601 being the best.

But... How is DD-MM-YYYY *worse* than MM-DD-YYYY?

At least DD-MM-YYYY is a reverse sorted YYYY-MM-DD and not a "random order" one.

@sa0bse @stragu As posted in the very old post you replied to: "At least the US one sorts by month, then day, so a 1-year archive is correct."

EU order sorts by day first, which is never what you want. Or were you planning on piping everything thru `rev` before sorting?

@mdhughes @stragu As someone else mentioned in some other part of this tree of posts.

It's probably based on language. In US people when they communicate dates they seem to tell it in the order of MM-DD-YYYY while in at least two countries that I'm aware of in EU we're saying it in the order of DD-MM-YYYY, which is part of how the spoken language works.

@alm10965 @stragu The day starts at 00:00, ends at 24:00 (which is the same as 00:00 of the following day, which is why you'll never see it on a clock).

@m_eiman
And then put in, that extra confusion, with AM/PM
@stragu

@alm10965 @stragu At 00:00. The day has 24h, from 0h to 23h.

@pabs @stragu this is wrong. when you consider the individual digits (which is the entire purpose of the triangles) it should look like this

@xnx38h @pabs @stragu I gotta agree with xnx38h. Y-M-D is best for a variety of reasons, while M/D/Y and D/M/Y are pretty equally bad, but at least M/D/Y is written in the order we (US) say dates. (Please: use Y-M-D for everything technical or formal or international!)

@xnx38h @pabs @stragu D/M/Y has "logic" in that each increases in size... but does that translate to any real world benefit? If you sort by DMY you get the most-interleaved, worst order of these three. It's like writing binary LSB first, or timestamps SS:MM:HH

@touk @pabs @stragu yeah like i'd rather have mm:ss:hh than ss:mm:hh

@touk @xnx38h @pabs @stragu
There is a benefit of speaking it this way: depending on context, a prefix may be enough. Eg. if you know beforehand the year is 2021 you may stop listening after "6th of June"

@touk @xnx38h @pabs @stragu OTOH, D/M/Y is written we (NL) say dates.

@mvz @xnx38h @pabs @stragu Right, they're both valid as written forms of how people speak. 🙂
I think we all agree Y-M-D is great because it's sortable, unambiguous, most-significant-first, filename-friendly...

Now... US weights, volumes, distances, 12-hour time... are much more deserving of criticism 🙃

@touk @mvz @xnx38h @pabs @stragu Fun thing, in Sweden we also have the shortformat DD/MM where we say "first in third" (directly translated for first of March). So the extended version of that is pretty much DD/MM/YYYY. I guess it's pretty identical in NL.

@pabs @stragu It's literally just "the way you say it when you talk."

"When is Halloween?" "October thirty-first, I think."

🤷‍♀️

@Magess @pabs @stragu that's not universal. In British English we say "the 31st of October". Cause and effect are very strange here.

@iMartyn @Magess @pabs @stragu Brits used to say it the way Americans do but started changing in the late 19th century to align more closely with the mainland where in romance languages it was spoken with the day first. It's only the "standard" because Europe made it so. The actual ISO standard is YYYY-MM-DD. Apps should instead just adapt to the locale.

@pabs @stragu The second logic in this picture isn't logic at all. It's just insane

@pabs @stragu not entirely European. Thankfully some European countries like Sweden is sane, and uses ISO standard.

@loke @stragu @pabs Sweden: Europe's Japan

@loke @pabs @stragu Yes, but not everywhere. We still do this, todays date is 3/3. Which matches the pattern of DD/MM/YYYY.

@sa0bse @stragu @loke @pabs True. And some EU regulation like expiry dates requires DD/MM/YYYY format and applies to Sweden.

But in a formal context, like contract dates and other things, Sweden has been using YYYY-MM-DD since before ISO-8601. Swedish ID numbers started using big-endian dates (but without the dashes and with a two-digit year) already in 1947.

@stragu @loke @sa0bse @pabs The term originally comes from Gulliver's Travels! The Liliput war is about which end of the egg to put in the cup, IIRC.

Hackers then borrowed the term and used it for which end of the byte or word goes first, anticipating the wars over it. =)

@clacke @stragu @sa0bse @pabs There is no war. There is just the correct answer (always big endian, for bytes and dates).

🙂 (need to add that, because sarcasm and Internet)

@loke @stragu @sa0bse @pabs Just because you're right doesn't mean nobody will go to war against you. 😁

@clacke @stragu @sa0bse @pabs Yes, that's true. 🙂

@stragu
oddly enough it still seems to work on all phones or accounts, as my wife's is still showing that ridiculous format...