Just makes sense

YYYY-MM-DD gang rise up!

ISO 8601. This is the way.
For naming in file names yes.
- For every mention of any date ever.
  Even when talking to your friends.
  When's your birthday?
  2025-11-23
- For naming the person your dating no

Any answer other than ISO 8601 is a red flag

RFC 3339 has less ambiguities, see https://ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/
- Sure, but that's also iso8601:
  This document defines a date and time format for use in Internet protocols that is a profile of the ISO 8601 standard
  https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3339
- Yeah, I prefer a space or underscore instead of the T, much easier to read.
- !rfc3339@programming.dev
- What a lovely webpage.
  Turns out I'm an RFC 3339 guy through and through. I thought I was ISO 8601, but I'm just not. Every so often you learn something new about yourself. Today is one of those days.
  I mean, I have no end of respect for all those good ISO 8601 people out there, but if it's not in RFC3339, it's not for me. Unless it's that ambiguous but pretty stuff that's only in the html living standard bubble.

YYYY-MM-DD

:hh:mm:ss optional

I agree. What is the point of dating things if they aren't in order when done.
- Sometimes it's just about the sex.
Also makes it easier to sort
- Exactly! I generate a frack-ton of excel reports at work, and I output them in the format Subject-Report-2025-09-01.
  And on another note, when you're traveling through the time Continuum, do you ask the nearest person for the day and month first? Nope, it's always "what year is it?!" because you're probably being chased by futuristic terrorists or super soldiers...

YYYY/MM/DD is good for file locating in a single folder.

This is the way
- this is the way
And YYYY-MM-DD if you're all in one level because there are far fewer files.
Exactly, combining chronological and lexicographic order perfectly.
I just do YY/MM/DD. It is highly unlikely someone is looking at those files a century later.
- And now I feel old. 😞
- Prepared for 2100

Use ISO 8601 or get out.

Except, don't actually use ISO 8601 because the T in the middle looks stupid.

You're in luck! The T is optional provided you include separators between your hours, minutes, and seconds!
- hmmm... but without a T you get
  2025-09-0119:42
  0119 looks weird.
ISO 8601 FTW
I didn’t get erect by that wiki, but it moved slightly
- Found the wikisexual.

ISO 8601 is the only true answer.

YYYYMMDD is the best. Easiest to sort.

you forgot this: --
- No

She must hate that he doesn't prefer YYYY/MM/DD

I don't like the slashes, as hand written they can appear as a 1.
Edit: also slashes mess with file names, gotta use escape characters

YYYY-MM-DD for electronic sorting.

DD-MMM-YYYY for everything else.

Edited to add: it is wild to me that people downvote someone else's opinion about something so mundane.

The 1st of September, year of our Lord 2025 AD.
- AD means "in the year of our lord".
- September 1st, 1981 AD, 12:01PM and 5 seconds, 35 feet west of Paris, Wisconsin on the Horizon
I think using three digits for the month is a bit confusing. :)
I don't like DD-MM-YYYY. I think it should be DD.MM.YYYY. This way you can distinguish between the date formats in those cases where people only use two digits for the year. Hyphen as a seperator means year in front, a dot means year at the end. And a slash implies the bad format.
- I usually see MMM as an indicator for the three letter month abbreviation, useful for when humans are reading it (since it makes it all that much more difficult to misinterpret)
- MMM is a three letter abbreviation, like Jan or Mar or Sep.
- MM.DD.YYYY is illegal. It's random. Just sort by how big the time unit is and get DD.MM.YYYY
I didn't spot the three Ms at first.
03-Sep-2025. I don't like it, but I forgive it because at least it's unambiguous, unlike some other date formats that aren't YYYY-MM-DD we could mention.
downvoted for whining, not for your opinion. just to clarify :p
- Be baffled is whining?
If you are going to provide a separate format for readability, make it ddd MMM dd, yyyy! Day of week is quite relevant to humans.

RED FLAG! RED FLAG!!!

YYYY.MM.DD_HH24MI.SS

e.g.

2025.09.02_1830.33

you know EXACTLY when the timestamp is referring to.

remove the time part you still got a pretty clean date 2025.09.02 which is also computer sort friendly.

the only missing component is the Timezone which I find pretty stupid TBH, because as a big Space Sci-fi fan, there needs to be a universal timecode system which is universal in the literal sense. Well technically it can never be, relativity and all, but you get what I mean..

also while we are at it, we should start teaching kids 12 digit number system, so that we get rid of the pesky decimal with a more efficient duodecimal.

Oooh, and make year 13 months with each month exactly 28 days, and the fractional remainder at the end of solar cycle is just a blackout timescape that nobody acknowledges collectively throughout the world.

This got increasingly unhinged and I support all of it.
False, it doesn't include the timezone information ISO datetime is best, at the time og writing that would be 2025-09-03T10:10:30Z

DD-YYYY-MM

Because it can be pronounceable as damn.

YMMV
Sounds like a good reason to change your language to be compliant with ISO 8601.

annnnnnnd that's enough lemmy for the day

!rfc3339@programming.dev

I'm afraid you're date is incompatible with mine. I prefer the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC stored in a 64 bit signed int.

I prefer %a, %d %b %Y %T %Z because of legacy support

py

    
>>> time.strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %T %Z")
'Tue, 02 Sep 2025 14:06:16 GMT'

April 25th, of course.

April 5th, 2063

As a filmmaker I'm incredibly upset that they flipped the image, it's like it's breaking the 180° rule but worse.

hh:mm:ss dddd, MMM dd

Objectively the correct way for a clock to be configured. I will die on this hill.

How does it make sense? Calendars aren't set up by date number, they are set up by month. You need to know which month you're talking about to get to the right date.

Most of the time you only need the day though cause months are easier to retain. It's the same reason why you wouldn't say that knowing the year is most important than the month. You probably don't need a reminder that it's 2028.
If you already know the month you only need the day. If you dont, then you need both anyway.

I do DDMMMYYYY, 02SEP2025. It is from Good Documentation Practices (GDP).

someone needs to learn the 180 rule

It’s currently October 2nd, 2025. MM-DD-YYYY
It’s currently the 2nd of October, 2025. DD-MM-YYYY
It’s currently 2025, October 2nd. YYYY-MM-DD
It’s currently 2025 the 2nd of October. YYYY-DD-MM

First one is my go to.

3 is best. And also ISO. Most notably because if you have dates in that format, alphabetical.sort and sort by date are the same thing. You can also continue from there to increasing degrees of precision, like 2025-09-01 23:02:35 and that remains true.
Please delete 4. Literally no one wants or uses it. It's just FUD for 3.
- Number 4 only works in a Terminator/Arnold Schwarzenegger accent.
- Agreed, chaotic evil right there