3 wk. ago • 97%

Canadian man reading date never knows which is day and which is month unless day is above 12

thebeaverton.com Canadian man reading date never knows which is day and which is month unless day is above 12

KITCHENER – Local man Dalton Strickland, whose data entry job regularly requires him to read dates off a form and put them into a computer, literally never knows which date is the day and which is the month unless the day is above 12. “Are we using the American MM-DD-YYYY system or the rest of […]

Because he didn't know about ISO8601. The only correct date format, especially in Canada.

27 comments

"What. No it’s month first,” responded his girlfriend Christine. The couple subsequently got in a huge fight and broke up, meaning their relationship only lasted from 10/01/2023-05/03/2024, with neither knowing if that is 6 months or over a year.

What a good line 😂

71
- The Beaverton is great.
  
  4
- , with neither knowing if that is 6 months or over a year.
  
  I mean, that's the kind of ambiguity that makes exes hot, right?
  
  ...right?
  
  2
YYYY-MM-DD crew checking in

30
I didn't know it was called ISO8601 but I started naturally using it at work. It removes confusion among international colleagues, makes it way easier to sort data, and is also good for version control of docs.

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- Me too. It looks quite normal now and, yes, is great for file organisation.
  
  4
I.e. 2024-10-13

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- Wait, is that the thirteenth of October, or Smarch 10th?
  
  13
  
  Oh, lousy Smarch weather!
  
  3
  
  Yes
  
  1
ISO8601 is great and all, but even without a common standard, I feel it should either be largest to smallest unit, or smallest to largest. YMD or DMY. Anything else is just asking for misunderstandings.

11
- YMD is the way to go, because it auto-sorts on a computer.
  
  Even when you tuck on the time, or would you prefer 59:46:13-14:10:2024 :-) ?
  
  7
  
  Are computers the most important thing?
  
  Usually when I read a date I hardly care about year, because most events I read about are within a year
  
  3
  
  I'm not disagreeing in general, but I need to point out that this is like saying you should write Arabic numerals in order of decreasing powers of 10 because it autosorts on a computer.
  
  It's the reverse. Computers automatically sort Arabic numerals and dates written in decreasing powers because those are the correct formats.
  
  3
- Well that throws out DD-MM-YYYY because it's second smallest, smallest, fourth smallest, third smallest....
  
  2
  
  Heh... not what I meant, but technically correct
  
  2
ISO-8601 is the only true time format. Big-endian all the way, baby!

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- I also only use data formats that can be alphabetized.
  
  1
Unironically a major consideration for me if I was scheduling a C-section.

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My favourite is when you’re reading documentation for an API or an SDK or whatever and the examples show things like “2024-05-05” as the date where they’re both the same number and you can’t discern it at all. Like, use Halloween or Christmas or something as the date so it’s always obvious, eh?

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- 07/05/09
  
  6
  
  9th of July 2005?
  
  1
The rest of the world's date system is most certainly not DD-MM-YYYY.

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- Care to elaborate? In my part of the world it absolutely is, with only some confusion sometimes caused by American dates
  
  3
  
  Large parts of asia (and prob some elsewhere) use YYYY/MM/DD
  
  5

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