Was looking for this. Yes. Whenever possible, dates should be specified in a format that is BOTH RFC 3339 and ISO 8601. I'd say both have their quirks, but the intersection of the grammars is machine-parseable and human-readable without (much) legacy baggage or (much) experimental / reserved-for-future-use noise.
Though the way it specifies raw UTC times is odd (8601 uses Z, 3339 uses -00:00), that got changed with RFC 9557 to align with 8601.
It also supports "zoned date times", where instead of just using the UTC offset, you can also include a timezone identifier, e.g. 2020-01-01T00:00+01:00[Europe/Paris]. Useful if you're doing calculations on dates but can be ignored otherwise.
It's in sort order. Even if you use it for things that don't understand dates, they sort properly because the day is the last part, month is the middle part, and year is the first part. If you include hours, minutes or seconds, the sort order is still preserved.
Speaking of things that don't understand dates, because there are no slashes, you can easily use it in file names, directories, and anything else that treats slash as a special character. In addition, if you include the time part, because it uses "T" to separate the date and time, it doesn't use a space, so once again it can be easily used anywhere where a space might cause issues.
ISO is better for archiving and sorting, inarguably so. But dd-mm-yyyy is better for day to day daily life usage, where the day and month are much more important than the year.
Both have their uses, but for different situations. mm-dd-yyyy is just batshit though.
Yes, ISO-8601 is objectively better than YYYY/DD/MM or MM/DD/YYYY or other strange formats. But, because it isn't the most widely used format, it can be less efficient when there's no danger of MM/DD vs DD/MM confusion.
If person A is talking to person B and they're from the same culture, some culture-specific version like DD/MM/YY might be easier for them because it's what they're both used to, even if it is objectively inferior. But, if person A is talking to person C who is from a different place/culture things get more challenging because if the day of the month is 12 or under, it's hard to distinguish between DD/MM or MM/DD. Even if person C knows that person A comes from a place that does DD/MM, they don't know if person C used the native DD/MM format they're used to, or translated it to them to MM/DD because person A was trying to make things easy for person C.
One of the advantages of the hyphens in ISO-8601, aside from them working with files, is that hyphens in dates are less common than slashes, so if someone sees 1212-11-12 they're more likely to understand that it's an ISO-formatted date. If they see 1212/11/12 it might be a MM/DD date or a DD/MM date.
To be fair, the time separators don't behave well on all implementations of filesystem access by filename. Need to use underscores or omit them at times.
And unlike most „forbidden characters“ for file names, the colon is actually used in NTFS: to separate the file path from the name of a named fork Alternate Data Stream.
"While Galactus has omniscient knowledge of all current user data providers, it doesn't have future sight"
Just use EKS to deliver the feature this quarter, and block the OmegaStar migration on "the team gets their shit together" and supports ISO timestamps.
Except I can't get behind the time part of it, personally. I can see the point of doing GMT with the offset if you're working across multiple timezones, but it's overkill for situations where you aren't.
I think we should all, as a globe, just pick one time zone and use that. I don't care if my 1:00 pm is the middle of that night. Everyone's 5:00pm will be 5:00pm. We will learn how to adjust our schedules for the master time zone.
If you work at a company where all of its offices are in the same time zone and you're time-stamping logs, then it's more expedient for understanding and placing an event in time against other things to use local time.
Unless everything is already standardized as GMT with offset I guess, but I feel like down that route lies madness.
"I got your email at 20:37:45-7:00" is a few more steps than "I got your email at 1:37PM".
It's not a big hurdle, but I try to design for the newest member on the team scrambling in panic rather than a calm cool professional already familiar with conventions.
Now, as soon as we do start dealing with multiple time zones I would just cut my custom time formatting string down to the shorthand to have the scripting language output in the full ISO 8601 format. But until then, being able to easily sort the the date properly and having the time be more human readable is a more "workable" compromise.
Seeing how often I get meeting invites for the wrong time because coworkers ignore my 11 a.m. CDT, and invite me in their timezone, I feel like communicating everything in UTC would be easier, because there could be no confusion.
If you work at a company where all of its offices are in the same time zone
coworkers ignore my 11 a.m. CDT, and invite me in their timezone
PLEASE read the comment you are replying to before submitting your reply.
Even in a single-timezone organization, I think it is still useful to use UTC+offset because it avoids DST confusion and lets the company expand to a second timezone without the team members there feeling second-class. But, GMT+offset does have costs with dealing with people that don't really think about timezones when scheduling, and those costs might overwhelm any advantages.
Now, as soon as we do start dealing with multiple time zones I would just cut my custom time formatting string down to the shorthand to have the scripting language output in the full ISO 8601 format. But until then, being able to easily sort the the date properly and having the time be more human readable is a more "workable" compromise.
July 4th is a funny example cause you can say “the 4th” and everyone knows what you mean, but people also say “4th of July” to give it more importance.
That’s a lot less common for other dates, Americans aren’t commonly saying “25th of December”.
At least it saves a "the" and an "of", unless dd/mm countries say "It's 3rd June" or "3 June". Do you not say "the 3rd of June"? In the US you can say "June 3rd". Plus it's natural to line up with yyyy/mm/dd order but in most daily conversations you don't need to say the year.
In spoken conversation it doesn't really matter. In many contexts you could probably just say "Want to go on the third?" and the person you're talking to will understand you mean August the third of this current year.
It does to me. mm-dd is not used at all in my native language and would be considered grammatically incorrect. Since English doesn't prescribe it I have no reason to fully accept it.
Note that I still prefer to write ISO 8601 dates but my spoken dates are big-endian.
Middle-endian dates like "June 15th 2046" are just bad, of course.
I commented earlier that having to say more words is inefficient, but what yiu said made me think... In other languages I know, it's basically spoken as "3rd August'... Eliminating the inefficiency. It's really more English's general inefficiency that irks me, more so than the order of the dates lol
same. even if they give a different format, because fuck that I'm not thinking about what arbitrary format you want me to use, I see a date field and I'm filling it out with the proper date format
Yes as well (Also insane) but its universally ledgable, sorts on computers easier, accomodates timezones and sub-second units. ISO-8601 should be the universal standard, and anyone who says otherwise better show up with a white paper explaining why. None of this dumb american format or javascript web form bullshit, language is about specificity, BE SPECIFIC. Unless you want to go off the rails and talk about relativity, time dialation and reference points... But thats all above my pay grade. ISO-8601 is a golden example of "good enough for normal people". Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.
I shorthand it verbally unless I'm giving a full date, but typed, it's almost always yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss (whichever part of that is relevant).
I do this because I believe it's the most logical, it sorts properly without having to use a datetime library, and it can't be confused with another system (is 12-1-2026 in the future or the past? No way to know just by looking at it).
Just shortening it to MM-dd could cause confusion with anyone not in the US so I'll typically include the year as well (also useful if I wind up having to look at old notes or emails to not have to figure out the year I meant ... Which has happened more than once ...)
Only a truly insane person would use mm-dd-yy in conversation. “Want to go to a hockey game with me ten seventeen twenty-six?” Or worse, “…oh four oh seven twenty-seven.” Pure madness.
Conversationally, mmm d yy or d mmm yy (usually just shortened to mmm d or d mmm) is where it’s at.
yes, I'll send dates as mm-dd in my personal life as well. only when discussing exact dates for scheduling things, otherwise in conversational messaging it's mmmm dd
like if we're talking about when we want to go do x activity, I'll propose August 8th. but if we're scheduling trip dates, it's 08-08 through 09-12
oh yeah. There are numerous benefits to the format itself, outside the question of hyphens vs slashes.
I find the sortability quite satisfying, but also as somebody living in the US, I also like that it's unambiguous regardless of my audience. Hell, half the time I see people hand-write a date on something they don't even use a year.
There are also variants with single dots too. I sometimes do timestamps without any separator too, depending on the context (such as file backups): YYYYMMDD in example 20260805.
I actually used to do single dots in my own file/folder names. It's probably my favorite way visually, since it's a minimal separator and as you showed it works without a separator at all.
RFC3339 is better than ISO8601 since it doesn't allow some of the esoteric formats, and allows some useful formats that ISO8601 doesn't (like separating date and time by a space instead of by T)
For example, 2026-W32-1 is also a valid ISO8601 date: Monday on the 32nd week of 2026. That format isn't allowed with RFC3339.
yyyy/mm/dd, it's less ambiguous and it sorts nicely
Edit: so many replies suggesting using a hyphen as a separator, I'd like to compromise by using the oblique angle sign (⦧) which looks like a slash that becomes a hyphen in the middle. yyyy⦧mm⦧dd
Beat me to it, except I’d do yyyy-mm-dd because some OSes throw fits about having slashes in file names. Way better than the “Group Project-final FINAL v3 PAUL USE THIS ONE.file” versioning system that people seem to use.
That’s really funny. DMY is more like Hms in that it is in descending order of relevance. Most people asking the date or time are looking for the hour of the day or the day of the month, and the rest is context.
My comment was about vocal human interaction, not on a device.
I agree with that in principle, but a) it should be in meta data and b) it should be abstracted so the user can display any format they wish. As a last resort, in the file name, sure. That standard adds a lot of extra time gumpf
I see the duality in this but I still think both are valid. When telling the time, there's usually no point in including the seconds since they'll have changed before you finish saying the whole thing anyway. In spoken word IMO it makes sense to go from more specific to less specific, and even not include extra parts sometimes (e. g. "today is the 3rd" when it's expected to know the month and, well, year from context, or "it's half past" to someone whom you've told the time a couple of minutes ago).
The point is the order of importance, i am gonna need to know day and month we are in way more often than the year, i also want to know more often the hours and the minutes than the seconds, the seconds change way too often to be useful in most scenarios
ITT: people saying one thing is better than any other without thinking of context.
If I want to know today's date ISO 8601 isn't a good answer. And if I put stuff in folders by date then DD-MM-YYYY is a real bad way to do it.
But MM-DD-YYYY is the worst one no matter the context.
I became an evangelist for YYYY-MM-DD format once I had to deal with a legal battle that had multiple years of documentary evidence. I sorely regretted my choice of naming files when I had to wade through a heckton of upsetting reminders. It got a lot easier when I renamed everything according to YYYY-MM-DD (and the lawyers probably appreciated it too)
The one you grew up with tends to be your preference. But the usual reason I give for MM-DD-YYYY is it matches how it's said.
December 25th, 2026
12-25-2026
I also know there's no point in arguing about this because, again, my first sentence. It's just team sports stuff, as usual. The only reason why you would bother to argue is if you were trying to convince people to use a standard. But as you pointed out, ISO 8601 already exists. That is the agreed upon standard already. But no one uses it, since we have our preferred systems of date format already ingrained.
I agree, if you truncate YYYY-MM-DD you can only shorten it to showing the year and month. Besides, if I ask someone the date and they start from the year I'll just pull my phone out.
The problem is not the format itself, its just sometimes we don't know which format is used: 07/07/26
Edit: This was probably a bad example, because it does not matter which format, as it is clear it is 7th of July 2026 in both possible formats. A better example: 01/02/26
Months are stupid anyway, lets drop them and swap for what they were supposed to represent instead: the moon phase, so today would be 216-2026-Waning Gibbous
ISO 8601 RFC 3339 (yyyy-mm-dd) for storing dates in software. Any format that that goes in the order of day, month, and year for conversational/presentational purposes, preferable the format is dynamic depending on the user's locale (even for those that want the month first). There now everyone is happy.
Edit: switched to RFC 3339 since it is a subset of ISO 8601 that is more strict, and I love semantics.
RFC3339 is better than ISO8601 since it doesn't allow some of the esoteric formats, and allows some useful formats that ISO8601 doesn't (like separating date and time by a space instead of by T)
For example, 2026-W32-1 is also a valid ISO8601 date: Monday on the 32nd week of 2026. That format isn't allowed with RFC3339.
Damn it I forgot about the duration part of ISO 8601 (which is also super useful and I love it). I'll amend it to RFC 3339 to be more exact in what I mean (even though the specified format should prevent the more esoteric formats).
AKA typically the single most relevant reason to record one at all. But yes. Most people prefer to begin by thinking about the least significant piece of information, and then go from there.
We grew up on MM/DD/YYYY but all our computer stuff is YYYY/MM/DD however now that we live in EU we use DD/MM/YYYY and still YYYY/MM/DD for files in pc
While it's confusing in a vacuum, it's also just the way we say it out loud in american English (April 20, 2026), so it's not that weird when you think about it like that.
However for countries that adopt dd-mm-yyyy, it's also completely natural to say it out loud in that way (20 April 2026).
So by that reasoning we will never end up with a universally accepted date format.
DD(First 3 of Month, All Caps)YYYY
examples: 01JAN2026, 24MAR1987,20DEC3065
This is how I had to write dates when I worked for a cGMP pharma manufacturing facility and did controlled paperwork. The idea was it was it was impossible for any mistakes when reading the date, only the days were 2 digits, the month was letters, and the year was 4 digits.
Basically all of the validated SOPs were written so that anyone could pick up the paperwork and execute the instructions, and the inverse had to be true as well anyone picking up a completed SOP should be able to read and follow everything written down, and literally every step in the process required initials and date it was executed.
Fun fact, if you fucked up and wrote something wrong or illegibly you were punished twice, once because you had to strike out the mistake, initial date the strikeout and write correctly the next time, and the second was when you get stink eyed by the QA people who have to review all the paperwork before it's scanned and logged back into documentum.
Already saw 1 person write 4/7/26. Writing that 3-4 letters for the month both solves the day/month vs month/day issue, and the off chance someone makes mistake of the month number
Yeah, this is how I do it. Computers are more than capable of handling the three-letter abbreviation for months nowadays, versus some bygone era where perhaps we needed just numbers. This is how I date anything that I need to out a date on.
Why? dd/mm/yyyy isnt practical. If you are asking someone to check out part of a book, you wouldn't say "paragraph 4, chapter 3", you start broad and become more specific. Calendars, at least in the US, are organized by month. You have turn turn to the month page before finding the date, it makes more sense to say month first because its the first piece of information that you need (unless its a more rare case that you are talking about an event in another year).
Im sure programmers prefer something different, but humans shouldn't have to communicate differently to make computing easier. Computing exists to make human life easier, not the other way around.
What is inconsistent about it? That's a weird argument against its use.
I like it because it's in order of smallest maximum integer. I know that's not why we use it in the US but it's still satisfying to me to see the first number smaller than the second on all but 78 days of the year.
For daily use — like, if someone asks me the date — I don’t normally bother telling them the year anyway (nor the month, for that matter). But for situations wherein the year is important enough to mention, year/month/day all the way.
Ya know, I really think every language needs to agree on having a distinct month, day, and year marker to completely eliminate all date confusion. And I mean something universal, even if it's as simple as a sun symbol for days and moon symbol for months, similar to Japanese. Whenever I see a date in Japanese, I am absolutely never confused at all and I appreciate it.
I wish US Americans would do this, but when I try to use it, it's too ambiguous with our mm/dd/yyyy format that already exists. So, I think the US will have to go with YYYYMMDD. That's the most straightforward and easy to understand method of switching to an entirely numeric date sequence that is logical.
DD MON YEAR is the only one that’s not ambiguous on November tenth and the like. 10 Nov 2022 is less confusing than either 11/10/2022 or 10/11/2022 and is without a doubt never confusing.
ISO-8601 or RFC-3339 is the way. It's not about which is better, but about that it would be confusing to use MMDDYYYY or DDMMYYYY since the other exists.
Sorry for the snark, seeing how you seem to be a person, lemme answer more like a person too
First, and most importantly, I think no one should police the way people speak, as long as no harm is done with that speech. Let them express themselves
But also, while less important, "confusing" is just a very normal criticism to make for date formats. Even if they "literally just disagree", the reason they disagree could very well be the fact that other formats are confusing!
But yeah, this is all less important than it seems, you just set up some really low hanging fruit for me with that comment, no hard feelings
239 Comments
red_tomato@lemmy.world · 322 pts · 50d
ISO 8601
7EP6vuI@feddit.org · 201 pts · 50d
ISO 8601
jlow@slrpnk.net · 46 pts · 50d
👆
GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca · 16 pts · 50d
RFC 3339 FTW!
Open source, and no ambiguous options grandfathered in.
bss03@infosec.pub · 5 pts · 49d
Was looking for this. Yes. Whenever possible, dates should be specified in a format that is BOTH RFC 3339 and ISO 8601. I'd say both have their quirks, but the intersection of the grammars is machine-parseable and human-readable without (much) legacy baggage or (much) experimental / reserved-for-future-use noise.
The_Decryptor@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 50d
Though the way it specifies raw UTC times is odd (8601 uses
Z, 3339 uses-00:00), that got changed with RFC 9557 to align with 8601.It also supports "zoned date times", where instead of just using the UTC offset, you can also include a timezone identifier, e.g.
2020-01-01T00:00+01:00[Europe/Paris]. Useful if you're doing calculations on dates but can be ignored otherwise.plasma8726@lemmy.today · 13 pts · 50d
This is the only way to date.
Iusedtobeanalien@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 50d
No need for dashes
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 49d
Except for, yknow, human readability
bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 50d
I've recently noticed web forms and appointment emails start to use that format. Maybe web devs are sneaking it in bit by bit.
Nonononoki@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 50d
Are a lots of things gonna break in about 8000 years?
CanadianCarl@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 49d
ISO week date
merc@sh.itjust.works · 63 pts · 50d
As for why it's better:
Rothe@piefed.social · 10 pts · 50d
ISO is better for archiving and sorting, inarguably so. But dd-mm-yyyy is better for day to day daily life usage, where the day and month are much more important than the year.
Both have their uses, but for different situations. mm-dd-yyyy is just batshit though.
merc@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 49d
Uh, no.
Untamed_Star@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 49d
It literally just depends to what you are used to.
merc@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 49d
Yes, ISO-8601 is objectively better than YYYY/DD/MM or MM/DD/YYYY or other strange formats. But, because it isn't the most widely used format, it can be less efficient when there's no danger of MM/DD vs DD/MM confusion.
If person A is talking to person B and they're from the same culture, some culture-specific version like DD/MM/YY might be easier for them because it's what they're both used to, even if it is objectively inferior. But, if person A is talking to person C who is from a different place/culture things get more challenging because if the day of the month is 12 or under, it's hard to distinguish between DD/MM or MM/DD. Even if person C knows that person A comes from a place that does DD/MM, they don't know if person C used the native DD/MM format they're used to, or translated it to them to MM/DD because person A was trying to make things easy for person C.
One of the advantages of the hyphens in ISO-8601, aside from them working with files, is that hyphens in dates are less common than slashes, so if someone sees 1212-11-12 they're more likely to understand that it's an ISO-formatted date. If they see 1212/11/12 it might be a MM/DD date or a DD/MM date.
bookmeat@fedinsfw.app · 1 pts · 48d
Start using it and suddenly it becomes most used. It is the little acts that make a difference.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 49d
mm-dd-yyyy is sorted by size of number sets. It is no more or less arbitrary than sorting it by size of timespan.
ISO 8601 is the only measurably better format. Otherwise just use whatever you have in your area and don't be a snob about it.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 50d
To be fair, the time separators don't behave well on all implementations of filesystem access by filename. Need to use underscores or omit them at times.
libewa@feddit.org · 3 pts · 50d
And unlike most „forbidden characters“ for file names, the colon is actually used in NTFS: to separate the file path from the name of a
named forkAlternate Data Stream.raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 50d
See, I hadn't even read about this. TIL :)
Still, I use ISO8601 all the time when it comes to written dates :)
TootSweet@lemmy.world · 28 pts · 50d
This is the way.
davidagain@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 50d
This is the way.
bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 50d
This is the (year-month-) day.
trem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 15 pts · 50d
RFC 3339
mkwt@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 50d
ISO would be great, but sadly OmegaStar doesn't support ISO timestamps yet.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 50d
Wtf is an omega star?
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 50d
The last star of the Greek alphabet? 🤷🏻
Walk_blesseD@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 50d
A Warrior Cats and Omegaverse crossover character
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50d
What's a warrior cat
FluidBeef@quokk.au · 1 pts · 48d
All cats when they get the zoomies
bss03@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 49d
"While Galactus has omniscient knowledge of all current user data providers, it doesn't have future sight"
Just use EKS to deliver the feature this quarter, and block the OmegaStar migration on "the team gets their shit together" and supports ISO timestamps.
trainsrkool@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 50d
💯
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 50d
Except I can't get behind the time part of it, personally. I can see the point of doing GMT with the offset if you're working across multiple timezones, but it's overkill for situations where you aren't.
Dookieman12@piefed.social · 12 pts · 50d
There's no way to predict how a date will be used. No reason not to be flexible. No reason to break convention.
Eq0@literature.cafe · 7 pts · 50d
That’s how my brother missed a train: the linux planner used GMT while the local train company planner used assumed local time…
So I disagree
Cosmonaut_Collin@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 50d
I think we should all, as a globe, just pick one time zone and use that. I don't care if my 1:00 pm is the middle of that night. Everyone's 5:00pm will be 5:00pm. We will learn how to adjust our schedules for the master time zone.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 50d
Modern problems.jpg
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 50d
How so, out of curiosity?
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 50d
If you work at a company where all of its offices are in the same time zone and you're time-stamping logs, then it's more expedient for understanding and placing an event in time against other things to use local time.
Unless everything is already standardized as GMT with offset I guess, but I feel like down that route lies madness.
"I got your email at 20:37:45-7:00" is a few more steps than "I got your email at 1:37PM".
It's not a big hurdle, but I try to design for the newest member on the team scrambling in panic rather than a calm cool professional already familiar with conventions.
Now, as soon as we do start dealing with multiple time zones I would just cut my custom time formatting string down to the shorthand to have the scripting language output in the full ISO 8601 format. But until then, being able to easily sort the the date properly and having the time be more human readable is a more "workable" compromise.
theolodis@feddit.org · 4 pts · 50d
Seeing how often I get meeting invites for the wrong time because coworkers ignore my 11 a.m. CDT, and invite me in their timezone, I feel like communicating everything in UTC would be easier, because there could be no confusion.
bss03@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 49d
PLEASE read the comment you are replying to before submitting your reply.
Even in a single-timezone organization, I think it is still useful to use UTC+offset because it avoids DST confusion and lets the company expand to a second timezone without the team members there feeling second-class. But, GMT+offset does have costs with dealing with people that don't really think about timezones when scheduling, and those costs might overwhelm any advantages.
theolodis@feddit.org · 2 pts · 49d
Did you actually read beyond the first line?
CannedYeet@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 50d
Yeah, the time part should obviously be written in Swatch Internet Time, he writes at @910.
Serinus@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 50d
Not shit enough for a shitpost.
BigDiction@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 50d
It’s great, and standard for software. But do any of y’all communicate dates like this in your personal life?
Like “want to go to a hockey game with me 2026-10-17?” As cursed as mm-dd-yy is, it feels a lot more natural in conversation.
dantel@programming.dev · 37 pts · 50d
Say when is that independence day of yours?
There is nothing 'natural' about mm/dd/yy, it is just what you are used to - end of story.
BigDiction@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 50d
I knew I would eat shit for that comment.
July 4th is a funny example cause you can say “the 4th” and everyone knows what you mean, but people also say “4th of July” to give it more importance.
That’s a lot less common for other dates, Americans aren’t commonly saying “25th of December”.
dantel@programming.dev · 2 pts · 50d
Ok, let me rephrase that: See how 4th of July feels natural for you to say or hear?
That's because you're used to it.
That's how it is for the rest of us using DD-MM-YYYY, but for all dates.
Because that's what we are used to. And yes we use it in everyday life and in every conversation.
That is all there is to it.
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50d
I always feel like rolling my eyes whilst Americans slowly drawl the month at me before telling me the day of the month I wanted
“Dec…”
Oh god, you’re American
“…em…”
Here we go, we’re going for it
“…berrrrr”
Yes, we’re getting there
“…rrrrrrr”
Hopefully we get to the date, or I’m going to have to ask someone else
[inhales]
Why did it have to be an American
“Twenty….”
Please not the year
“…-seventh”
Hallelujah, thank the lord, we have a date. Oh Jesus, why such an ordeal. So much time for stupid intrusive thoughts. What was it again…?
Admittedly like most of this is my failings as a person
TrickDacy@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 50d
What you are used to inevitably becomes more natural for you subjectively...
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 49d
At least it saves a "the" and an "of", unless dd/mm countries say "It's 3rd June" or "3 June". Do you not say "the 3rd of June"? In the US you can say "June 3rd". Plus it's natural to line up with yyyy/mm/dd order but in most daily conversations you don't need to say the year.
Quokka@quokk.au · 12 pts · 50d
dd-mm feels completely natural to say in conversation. “Do you want to go to a X with me on the 3rd of August”
OpenStars@discuss.online · 5 pts · 50d
But... what YEAR!?!?
merc@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 50d
Does "August 3rd" sound unnatural to you?
In spoken conversation it doesn't really matter. In many contexts you could probably just say "Want to go on the third?" and the person you're talking to will understand you mean August the third of this current year.
Jesus_666@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 50d
It does to me. mm-dd is not used at all in my native language and would be considered grammatically incorrect. Since English doesn't prescribe it I have no reason to fully accept it.
Note that I still prefer to write ISO 8601 dates but my spoken dates are big-endian.
Middle-endian dates like "June 15th 2046" are just bad, of course.
recursivethinking@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 50d
I commented earlier that having to say more words is inefficient, but what yiu said made me think... In other languages I know, it's basically spoken as "3rd August'... Eliminating the inefficiency. It's really more English's general inefficiency that irks me, more so than the order of the dates lol
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 49d
No, but I'll go on August 3rd.
recursivethinking@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 50d
Its fine but its unnecessarily long. Its just one syllable/word but its extra.
ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 50d
Two words when used in a sentence. "The 3rd of August" vs "August 3rd"
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50d
I feel like you would only say “of August” if someone is staring at you in abject horror completely untethered from the time stream
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50d
Yeah I've been in those calendar meetings too
bitchkat@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 50d
I absolutely fill out dates in iso 8601 any time I'm required to sign a form.
davidagain@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 50d
I like your style. I'll start doing that, (unless a format is specified, because I'm no protocol breaker.)
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 50d
same. even if they give a different format, because fuck that I'm not thinking about what arbitrary format you want me to use, I see a date field and I'm filling it out with the proper date format
lena@gregtech.eu · 7 pts · 50d
Yes (I'm insane)
Bahnd@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 50d
Yes as well (Also insane) but its universally ledgable, sorts on computers easier, accomodates timezones and sub-second units. ISO-8601 should be the universal standard, and anyone who says otherwise better show up with a white paper explaining why. None of this dumb american format or javascript web form bullshit, language is about specificity, BE SPECIFIC. Unless you want to go off the rails and talk about relativity, time dialation and reference points... But thats all above my pay grade. ISO-8601 is a golden example of "good enough for normal people". Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 50d
Yes, kind of.
I shorthand it verbally unless I'm giving a full date, but typed, it's almost always yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss (whichever part of that is relevant).
I do this because I believe it's the most logical, it sorts properly without having to use a datetime library, and it can't be confused with another system (is 12-1-2026 in the future or the past? No way to know just by looking at it).
Just shortening it to MM-dd could cause confusion with anyone not in the US so I'll typically include the year as well (also useful if I wind up having to look at old notes or emails to not have to figure out the year I meant ... Which has happened more than once ...)
lividweasel@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 50d
Only a truly insane person would use mm-dd-yy in conversation. “Want to go to a hockey game with me ten seventeen twenty-six?” Or worse, “…oh four oh seven twenty-seven.” Pure madness.
Conversationally, mmm d yy or d mmm yy (usually just shortened to mmm d or d mmm) is where it’s at.
Dookieman12@piefed.social · 4 pts · 50d
There's no reason the two need to be the same. We don't talk in heximal either
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 50d
yes, I'll send dates as mm-dd in my personal life as well. only when discussing exact dates for scheduling things, otherwise in conversational messaging it's mmmm dd
like if we're talking about when we want to go do x activity, I'll propose August 8th. but if we're scheduling trip dates, it's 08-08 through 09-12
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50d
I spell out the month, but I'm fancy
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 125 pts · 50d
FAIL
yyyy-mm-dd
Adulated_Aspersion@lemmy.world · 37 pts · 50d
ISO 8601!
Mavenbushlog@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 50d
Long live the 8601
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 5 pts · 50d
my beloved
tetris11@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 48d
Bear in mind that
are all valid 8601
The_Decryptor@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 50d
RFC 3339 is even better, unless you do happen to like the "2026-W32-2" style dates.
OddMinus1@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 49d
Yep. Doing that joke and landing on anything but ISO-8601 would be a huge red flag for me.
Wirlocke@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 15 pts · 50d
Being able to sort numerically and have it also be in chronological order is sooo cool.
lietuva@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 50d
Lithuania, Hungary, Japan represent
cepelinas@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 50d
Tik gryžtu ir randu Lietuva.
darkmogool@feddit.org · 3 pts · 50d
yep… this or dd.mm.yyyy (for texts)
Mavenbushlog@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 50d
Based
Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 49d
This is the answer. So easy to sort.
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml · 90 pts · 49d
YYYY-MM-DDZink@programming.dev · 12 pts · 49d
Yep and it needs to use hyphens and not slashes. It helps avoid missed typos or mis-reads in some situations, especially if hand-written.
froufox@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 14 pts · 49d
and it's perfectly sortable
Zink@programming.dev · 5 pts · 49d
oh yeah. There are numerous benefits to the format itself, outside the question of hyphens vs slashes.
I find the sortability quite satisfying, but also as somebody living in the US, I also like that it's unambiguous regardless of my audience. Hell, half the time I see people hand-write a date on something they don't even use a year.
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 49d
There are also variants with single dots too. I sometimes do timestamps without any separator too, depending on the context (such as file backups):
YYYYMMDDin example 20260805.Zink@programming.dev · 2 pts · 48d
I actually used to do single dots in my own file/folder names. It's probably my favorite way visually, since it's a minimal separator and as you showed it works without a separator at all.
flying_sheep@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 48d
ISO 8601 my beloved
baltakatei@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 48d
YYYY-mm-ddTHH:MM:SS±zzzz
flying_sheep@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 48d
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 48d
In fact the Linux date command even has an iso flag:
date --iso-8601baltakatei@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 46d
date -Ismy beloved.Zikeji@programming.dev · 80 pts · 50d
I read this meme and was physically revolted and wanted to immediately down vote. Great job.
The superior date format is, of course, ISO 8601. YYYY-MM-DD.
dan@upvote.au · 25 pts · 50d
RFC3339 is better than ISO8601 since it doesn't allow some of the esoteric formats, and allows some useful formats that ISO8601 doesn't (like separating date and time by a space instead of by
T)For example,
2026-W32-1is also a valid ISO8601 date: Monday on the 32nd week of 2026. That format isn't allowed with RFC3339.https://ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 49d
https://xkcd.com/927/
gex@lemmy.world · 69 pts · 50d
yyyy/mm/dd, it's less ambiguous and it sorts nicely
Edit: so many replies suggesting using a hyphen as a separator, I'd like to compromise by using the oblique angle sign (⦧) which looks like a slash that becomes a hyphen in the middle. yyyy⦧mm⦧dd
Pudutr0n@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 50d
nerd detected
7EP6vuI@feddit.org · 5 pts · 50d
lmftfy: american nerd detected
otter@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 50d
What's American about ISO 8601 with slashes?
Edit: typo
fartsparkles@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 50d
*ISO 8601
7EP6vuI@feddit.org · 1 pts · 50d
i don't think ISO 8601 allows slashes.
but: you are right, and i was not aware: many countries use the
/for dates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_date_formats_by_country i thought this was a USA thing... thanks for the hint!Carl@anarchist.nexus · 12 pts · 50d
Beat me to it, except I’d do yyyy-mm-dd because some OSes throw fits about having slashes in file names. Way better than the “Group Project-final FINAL v3 PAUL USE THIS ONE.file” versioning system that people seem to use.
Bahnd@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 50d
HISSSSSS.
switch the slashes to dashes
[Angry ISO-8601 noises]
VitoRobles@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 50d
I should turn your comment into a shitpost...
LordKitsuna@lemmy.world · 54 pts · 49d
AnnaFrankfurter@lemmy.ml · 36 pts · 49d
ISO 8601 or gtfo
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world · 35 pts · 49d
Ew.
yyyymmdd
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 48d
Tis the Canadian way.
Xyphius@lemmy.ca · 27 pts · 50d
I feel like DD/MM/YYYY is the same as doing: ss:mm:HH and I find that confusing.
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 50d
That’s really funny. DMY is more like Hms in that it is in descending order of relevance. Most people asking the date or time are looking for the hour of the day or the day of the month, and the rest is context.
Mavenbushlog@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 50d
Files get sorted by alphanumerical order so ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) is objectively superior in that regard.
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 50d
My comment was about vocal human interaction, not on a device.
I agree with that in principle, but a) it should be in meta data and b) it should be abstracted so the user can display any format they wish. As a last resort, in the file name, sure. That standard adds a lot of extra time gumpf
kamen@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 50d
I see the duality in this but I still think both are valid. When telling the time, there's usually no point in including the seconds since they'll have changed before you finish saying the whole thing anyway. In spoken word IMO it makes sense to go from more specific to less specific, and even not include extra parts sometimes (e. g. "today is the 3rd" when it's expected to know the month and, well, year from context, or "it's half past" to someone whom you've told the time a couple of minutes ago).
Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it · 1 pts · 49d
The point is the order of importance, i am gonna need to know day and month we are in way more often than the year, i also want to know more often the hours and the minutes than the seconds, the seconds change way too often to be useful in most scenarios
dEVbiKub@feddit.nu · 24 pts · 50d
That's a red flag... He has obviously not received the xkcd PSA.
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 49d
There is for everything a
Iusedtobeanalien@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 50d
YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
craftrabbit@lemmy.zip · 17 pts · 50d
Please use any kind of separation character or I'm gonna lose my mind
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 12 pts · 50d
Best I can give you is a single "_"
Mavenbushlog@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 50d
202609041006_15
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 49d
Most evil place to put it.
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 50d
Noar
Iusedtobeanalien@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 49d
It's easy once you get the hang of it
UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 50d
But you'll end up with months instead of minutes!
procrastitron@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 50d
Anyone who wants to write the millennium between the month and century loses all credibility when arguing about date formats.
YYYY-MM-DD is the only coherent date format.
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz · 6 pts · 50d
That took me a minute to parse, but now I like it.
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50d
It’s not a bad idea to write it 6202 but then we’re redoing all the numbers, and that’s going to take time
M137@lemmy.today · 16 pts · 50d
ITT: people saying one thing is better than any other without thinking of context.
If I want to know today's date ISO 8601 isn't a good answer. And if I put stuff in folders by date then DD-MM-YYYY is a real bad way to do it. But MM-DD-YYYY is the worst one no matter the context.
KernelTale@programming.dev · 27 pts · 50d
I like YYYY-MM-DD because then I don't have to figure out half the time if they used MM-DD-YYYY or if they were sane.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 50d
Can be tailed to the relevant bit though.
AnarchistArtificer@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 50d
I became an evangelist for YYYY-MM-DD format once I had to deal with a legal battle that had multiple years of documentary evidence. I sorely regretted my choice of naming files when I had to wade through a heckton of upsetting reminders. It got a lot easier when I renamed everything according to YYYY-MM-DD (and the lawyers probably appreciated it too)
chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 50d
The one you grew up with tends to be your preference. But the usual reason I give for MM-DD-YYYY is it matches how it's said.
December 25th, 2026
12-25-2026
I also know there's no point in arguing about this because, again, my first sentence. It's just team sports stuff, as usual. The only reason why you would bother to argue is if you were trying to convince people to use a standard. But as you pointed out, ISO 8601 already exists. That is the agreed upon standard already. But no one uses it, since we have our preferred systems of date format already ingrained.
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 50d
FYI it’s not really said like that elsewhere, they say
“(Friday the) 25th of December, 2026”
geissi@feddit.org · 2 pts · 50d
As someone from elsewhere: we dropped the "of"
And no, since I genuinely heard that before, 25th December does not imply that there are 24 other months called December.
__Lost__@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 50d
No, you only say the 4th of July that way
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 50d
No, you only say the 4th of July that way
OozingPositron@feddit.cl · 0 pts · 50d
I agree, if you truncate YYYY-MM-DD you can only shorten it to showing the year and month. Besides, if I ask someone the date and they start from the year I'll just pull my phone out.
sik0fewl@piefed.ca · 15 pts · 49d
I proper shit post would have suggested “mm/dd/yyyy”.
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 49d
The problem is not the format itself, its just sometimes we don't know which format is used: 07/07/26
Edit: This was probably a bad example, because it does not matter which format, as it is clear it is 7th of July 2026 in both possible formats. A better example: 01/02/26
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 49d
Obviously that's February 26th 2001
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 49d
You are so evil! :D
tetris11@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 48d
Uh, it's clearly my first 26th birthday at two in the morning
drath@lemmy.drath.ru · 14 pts · 50d
Months are stupid anyway, lets drop them and swap for what they were supposed to represent instead: the moon phase, so today would be 216-2026-Waning Gibbous
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50d
13 months of 4 weeks of 7 days. Add a holiday for new years that is not in any month. Call the 13th month Smarch to match the misprinted calendars.
abc@suppo.fi · 14 pts · 49d
The one that ends us with f... I mean ISO 8601 of course
dlsloop@lemmy.zip · 13 pts · 50d
I'm a YYYY/MM/DD man myself
Bahnd@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 50d
[ISO-8601 MAN SWOOPS IN FROM THE SKY]
You are close, work on your punctuation, see me after class
[Dramatic super hero exit]
dlsloop@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 50d
Wow, I was really not expecting us to get this far into the weeds in this thread but I suppose I should have lol
chickenf622@sh.itjust.works · 13 pts · 50d
ISO 8601RFC 3339 (yyyy-mm-dd) for storing dates in software. Any format that that goes in the order of day, month, and year for conversational/presentational purposes, preferable the format is dynamic depending on the user's locale (even for those that want the month first). There now everyone is happy.Edit: switched to RFC 3339 since it is a subset of ISO 8601 that is more strict, and I love semantics.
dan@upvote.au · 8 pts · 50d
RFC3339 is better than ISO8601 since it doesn't allow some of the esoteric formats, and allows some useful formats that ISO8601 doesn't (like separating date and time by a space instead of by
T)For example,
2026-W32-1is also a valid ISO8601 date: Monday on the 32nd week of 2026. That format isn't allowed with RFC3339.https://ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/
chickenf622@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 50d
Damn it I forgot about the duration part of ISO 8601 (which is also super useful and I love it). I'll amend it to RFC 3339 to be more exact in what I mean (even though the specified format should prevent the more esoteric formats).
The_Decryptor@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 50d
Don't forget about RFC 9557 though, which is an update to 3339 to bring it into closer alignment with ISO 8601 (regarding UTC).
Grostleton@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 13 pts · 50d
I prefer ddd/yyyy, much simpler
fartsparkles@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 50d
Ah yes,
Mon/2026, perfect…Baizey@feddit.dk · 10 pts · 50d
Gives you (up to) 52 shots at any plans, perfect
adarza@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 50d
%j/%Y
even simpler, it's all numbers.
whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 11 pts · 50d
1785793853 seconds since Linux epoch
FluidBeef@quokk.au · 2 pts · 48d
This is the epoch of the Linux desktop.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 49d
Y-DDD-MM
It is currently 6-004-08
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 49d
This is art.
tetris11@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 48d
*Tips hat*
Y'dame
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 50d
April 25th.
We've already established this.
Because it's not too hot and not too cold. All you need is a light jacket.
PopcornPrincess@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 50d
Dave@lemmy.nz · 2 pts · 50d
I can tell I'm on Lemmy because of how many ISO 8601 comments I had to scroll past to find this comment.
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50d
FYI that’s about 218°C
Passerby6497@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 49d
Good luck sorting anything by date!
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 49d
AKA typically the single most relevant reason to record one at all. But yes. Most people prefer to begin by thinking about the least significant piece of information, and then go from there.
itisileclerk@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 49d
Date format has nothing to do with sorting by date.
GarboDog@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 50d
We grew up on MM/DD/YYYY but all our computer stuff is YYYY/MM/DD however now that we live in EU we use DD/MM/YYYY and still YYYY/MM/DD for files in pc
Olmai@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 50d
Im more of a Medjool guy myself. Not sure what everyone else is talking about.
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de · 7 pts · 50d
53 comments and I'm the first effusive nerd to bring up unix epoch? Nothing happened before 0 (1970-01-01 00:00:00) anyway.
blackbeans@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 50d
Epoch is signed though, that 1970 date is the midpoint
My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 50d
YYYYYMMDD
I prefer to think we're in the year 12026, since homo sapiens really got things going around 10,000 BCE.
mister_universe@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 49d
For organizing my stuff I use
yyyy/mm/ddbecause in my opinion it's much better for that. Otherwisedd/mm/yyyy.Digit@lemmy.wtf · 6 pts · 49d
Oogh. Such rage bait.
khanh@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 49d
it's either DD/MM/YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD.
OttoVonNoob@lemmy.ca · 6 pts · 50d
Apparently im a freak who is MM/DD/YEAR.
Baizey@feddit.dk · 13 pts · 50d
Also known as an American™️
death_to_carrots@feddit.org · 10 pts · 50d
Yes, you are and you should feel shame about you.
Paradachshund@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 50d
While it's confusing in a vacuum, it's also just the way we say it out loud in american English (April 20, 2026), so it's not that weird when you think about it like that.
blackbeans@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 50d
However for countries that adopt dd-mm-yyyy, it's also completely natural to say it out loud in that way (20 April 2026). So by that reasoning we will never end up with a universally accepted date format.
Paradachshund@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 50d
Yep, I agree. There's no wrong answer, and language differs by culture.
davidagain@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 50d
There's a right answer, and it's yyyy-mm-dd.
davidagain@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 50d
That's MMM d yyyy, not mm dd yyyy. It removes the ambiguity but also removes the sortability. yyyy-mm-dd for the win.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · -1 pts · 50d
I think it's better than day month year but both are worse than year month day.
brognak@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 50d
DD(First 3 of Month, All Caps)YYYY examples: 01JAN2026, 24MAR1987,20DEC3065
This is how I had to write dates when I worked for a cGMP pharma manufacturing facility and did controlled paperwork. The idea was it was it was impossible for any mistakes when reading the date, only the days were 2 digits, the month was letters, and the year was 4 digits.
Basically all of the validated SOPs were written so that anyone could pick up the paperwork and execute the instructions, and the inverse had to be true as well anyone picking up a completed SOP should be able to read and follow everything written down, and literally every step in the process required initials and date it was executed.
Fun fact, if you fucked up and wrote something wrong or illegibly you were punished twice, once because you had to strike out the mistake, initial date the strikeout and write correctly the next time, and the second was when you get stink eyed by the QA people who have to review all the paperwork before it's scanned and logged back into documentum.
Anti_Iridium@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 50d
While personally I agree with you at the ddMMMyyyy superiority, it is kind of confusing in international markets.
The French words for June and July both start with Jui amongst other problems.
BilboBargains@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 47d
ISO datetime, let's goooooo YYYYMMDDHHmmSS
MidsizedSedan@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 49d
4/Aug/2026
Already saw 1 person write 4/7/26. Writing that 3-4 letters for the month both solves the day/month vs month/day issue, and the off chance someone makes mistake of the month number
Dozzi92@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 49d
Yeah, this is how I do it. Computers are more than capable of handling the three-letter abbreviation for months nowadays, versus some bygone era where perhaps we needed just numbers. This is how I date anything that I need to out a date on.
msage@programming.dev · 5 pts · 50d
Every fucking time they make him look like a tool.
kamen@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 50d
He formats dates, how else would he look like?
FluidBeef@quokk.au · 1 pts · 48d
Jesus?
GlendatheGayWitch@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 48d
Why? dd/mm/yyyy isnt practical. If you are asking someone to check out part of a book, you wouldn't say "paragraph 4, chapter 3", you start broad and become more specific. Calendars, at least in the US, are organized by month. You have turn turn to the month page before finding the date, it makes more sense to say month first because its the first piece of information that you need (unless its a more rare case that you are talking about an event in another year).
Im sure programmers prefer something different, but humans shouldn't have to communicate differently to make computing easier. Computing exists to make human life easier, not the other way around.
Domitian@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 48d
mm/dd/yyyy is horrendous and inconsistent, you can argue that yyyy/mm/dd is correct, but for daily use dd/mm/yyyy is way better
Jyek@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 48d
What is inconsistent about it? That's a weird argument against its use.
I like it because it's in order of smallest maximum integer. I know that's not why we use it in the US but it's still satisfying to me to see the first number smaller than the second on all but 78 days of the year.
JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 48d
For daily use — like, if someone asks me the date — I don’t normally bother telling them the year anyway (nor the month, for that matter). But for situations wherein the year is important enough to mention, year/month/day all the way.
AlfalFaFail@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 48d
We regularly back load the context in English.
hakunawazo@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 50d
https://www.trekterest.com/stardate
henfredemars@infosec.pub · 4 pts · 50d
3 Aug 2026
You can’t guess wrong.
blackbeans@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 50d
The Spanish would write Ago
The French would write Août
The Greek would write Αυγ
Arabic speaking would write أغسطس
Using words doesn't seem as universal as numbers.
henfredemars@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 50d
Good point. This format only works if the reader knows the language.
KittyCat@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 49d
You're all too ambiguous!
04-Aug-2026 is the only acceptable format
lightnsfw@reddthat.com · 4 pts · 49d
I love when all my reports are listed by day....
baltakatei@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 48d
What about a UNIX epoch HTML color clock?
eestileib@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 50d
That's a path I can't walk buddy, I think it's better we end it here before we get too attached.
pewpew@feddit.it · 4 pts · 50d
Correct opinion.
Burninator05@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 49d
You're thinking to hard. The best way to write a date is Julian. Today is 26216.
sit@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 49d
So… this Julian.. is he a friend of yours?
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 3 pts · 50d
February 23.
Because it's muh birfday 😋
TheImpressiveX@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 50d
@RemindMe@mstdn.social pm 2027-02-23
AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 50d
Ya know, I really think every language needs to agree on having a distinct month, day, and year marker to completely eliminate all date confusion. And I mean something universal, even if it's as simple as a sun symbol for days and moon symbol for months, similar to Japanese. Whenever I see a date in Japanese, I am absolutely never confused at all and I appreciate it.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 50d
Can we make every month 28 days while at it?
NewSocialWhoDis@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 48d
I wish US Americans would do this, but when I try to use it, it's too ambiguous with our mm/dd/yyyy format that already exists. So, I think the US will have to go with YYYYMMDD. That's the most straightforward and easy to understand method of switching to an entirely numeric date sequence that is logical.
Tarkcanis@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 50d
That or the reverse.
FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 48d
Month first is better because when someone says the date aloud, they start with the month "August 5th, 2026"
Pudutr0n@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 50d
it's like looking into a mirror
Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 48d
I meant to say i love month-day-year. August 5, 2026. I love day-month-year too, more than I like month-day-year
IhaveCrabs111@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 49d
Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 48d
CubitOom@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 50d
man dateEmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50d
DD MON YEAR is the only one that’s not ambiguous on November tenth and the like. 10 Nov 2022 is less confusing than either 11/10/2022 or 10/11/2022 and is without a doubt never confusing.
davidagain@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 50d
yyyy-mm-dd is an international standard. It's better because it's sortable.
EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50d
When I was doing data entry we did MMM-DD in folders with the year name, as yet another option.
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 50d
Apr Aug Dec Feb Jan Jul Jun Mar May Nov Oct Sep
Perfect
successfulgreen126@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 49d
yeah yeah a bit confusing lol
BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 49d
MM/DD/YY
It's an industry standard because it's everywhere. America, fuck yeah!!!
JamesTBagg@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 49d
YYYYMMDD is the ISO standard.
spitfire@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 49d
Same but with dots instead of slashes. Otherwise I can’t be sure it’s the right one.
Willie169@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 47d
ISO-8601 or RFC-3339 is the way. It's not about which is better, but about that it would be confusing to use MMDDYYYY or DDMMYYYY since the other exists.
CanadianCarl@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 49d
Est ante diem X Kalendas Augustus, AUC 2779.
megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone · -1 pts · 48d
Year day month is the only acceptable format.
tetris11@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 48d
so how's the murder rate in heathen land
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone · -2 pts · 50d
"confusing" you're dumb and/or likely being obtuse
"Dumb" or "it's bad" is fine.
But being confused by stuff you just disagree with has to stop
Daxter101@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 50d
Your complaints are confusing.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 49d
:(
Daxter101@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 49d
Sorry for the snark, seeing how you seem to be a person, lemme answer more like a person too
First, and most importantly, I think no one should police the way people speak, as long as no harm is done with that speech. Let them express themselves
But also, while less important, "confusing" is just a very normal criticism to make for date formats. Even if they "literally just disagree", the reason they disagree could very well be the fact that other formats are confusing!
But yeah, this is all less important than it seems, you just set up some really low hanging fruit for me with that comment, no hard feelings
Have a nice day!