this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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I really wonder how americans were able to fuck this one up. There are three ways to arrange these and two of them are acceptable!
Edit: Yes, I meant common ways, not combinatorically possible ways.
Hmmm more like 6 ways but I get your point
Three ways that people actually use. YYYY-MM-DD, DD-MM-YYYY, and MM-DD-YYYY (ew).
AFAIK no-one does YYYY-DD-MM, DD-YYYY-MM, or MM-YYYY-DD... yet. Don't let the Americans know about these formats, they might just start using them out of spite.
What the actual fuck
'hey man, what date is it today?' 'well it's the 15th of 2023, August'
Lmao, I want to try responding like this and see what the reactions are
I want to try this, too. Make it more possessive, though. The 15th of 2023's August. Really add to the confusion.
Need more julian dates, YYYY-JJJ.
What, 2023-223 for the 223rd day of the year 2023? That... is oddly appealing for telling the actual progress of the year or grouping. No silly "does this group have 31, 30, 29 or 28 members", particularly the "is this year a multiple of four, but not of 100, unless it's also a multiple of 400?" bit with leap days.
You'll have oddities still, no matter which way you slice it, because our orbit is mathematically imperfect, but it's a start.
So we need to correct our orbit is what I'm hearing!
That'd be a wack premise for a crazy scientist story
It is currently the Third of 1993, November.
TIHI.
Twelve ways if you count two-digit years. My nephew was born on 12/12/12 which was convenient.
for the americans, that's 12/12/12
Thanks bro, I was really confused
My grandmother was born in 1896 and lived to be 102, just long enough for the pre-Y2K computer systems in hospitals to think she was a two-year-old.
this guy does combinatorics
It's how the dates are typically said, here. November 6th, 2020 = 11/6/2020. [Edit: I had written 9 instead of 11 for November.] (We basically never say the sixth of November. It sounds positively ancient.) It's easy to use, but I agree that YYYY-MM-DD is vastly superior for organization.
Where is here that November = 9? Probably somewhere you've had a long day
Oct = 8
Nov = 9
Dec = 10
In metric time there are only 10 months per year
When is your independence day, again?
Anyway, in Australia (and, I suspect, other places that use DD/MM/YYYY) we use "{ordinal} of {month}" (11th of August), "{ordinal} {month}" (11th August), and "{month} {ordinal}" (August 11th) pretty much interchangeably. In writing but not in speaking, we also sometimes use "{number} {month}" (11 August). That doesn't have any bearing on how we write it short form though, because those are different things. It's not the defence many Americans seem to think it is of their insane method of writing the short form.
July 4th, why?
I've never once been confused about a written date whilst in the US. Your country's other-side-of-the-Earth flip-floppery on how it uses dates really doesn't (and shouldn't) impact our system, which we continue to use because it has proven effective and easy. Trying to stagnate an evolving culture/language is pointless and about as futile as trying to force a river to run backwards. If people start jumbling up how we do it here, like you say Australia does, then that will be right, too.
Saying it like that is no problem and not ambiguous. Writing it like that makes no sense though.
It is a bit of a chicken and egg question though. Because do Americans not say it that way because of the date format or is that the date format because you don't say it that way?
Because in countries using DD.MM.YY we absolutely do say 6th of November.
That's probably what happened. Though I do like starting with the larger context when talking about dates, but omitting it when talking about the current month or year.
I'm canadian and I've always prefered this format for the same reason. 11/6/23 is november 6th 2023, not the 11th of June 2023, that's weird.
As a different Canadian, I always use YYYY-MM-DD and a 24 hour clock.
Except that mm/dd/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy can be ambiguous, I definitely prefer the former if I'm not using an ISO date. But normally I just write ISO and my head translates to MMM dd,yyyy
Do people outside of the US not say dates like "June first" etc? M/D/Y matches that. It's really not weird at all, even if the international ambiguity is awful.
In Danish, it's said like 1st of June.
Yes it is objectively weird.
When you write down "07/01/1967" are you unaware that it is unclear whether you're referring to July 1st or January 7th?
And despite the fact that you're writing something down for the express purpose of communicating information, and you're choosing to shorten it's written format to save time and space, you're ok with either
a) just leaving it ambiguous and communicating poorly
or
b) having to write extra words to give it context, taking up more space than just writing out "July 1st, 1967"?
1967/06/01 clearly communicates we're starting with the year and going biggest to smallest time increments. There is no ambiguity as to which order it's ever in, and it's far shorter than the full written date.
At a fundamental user experience level, it is objectively nonsensical to choose the American date format when your goals are 1) clearly communicating a date and 2) doing it shorter than writing out the words.
I like to do YYDDMM because I'm a monster.
It's not unclear to americans. "Objectively" is hilarious here. If it's in the format people expect, then it's perfectly fine in context. Sorry that US traditions don't suit your fancy.
It's definitely confusing in an international context, but well-estsblished conventions don't change easily.
There are three options and Americans chose the dumbest and then defend it like there's logic to it.
Oh wow, never on earth did I think a discussion with an American would come to this
That's how formats work, I hate to break it to you. The ambiguity sucks, but the format itself makes perfect sense given the way americans say dates.
We all say dates the same.
It's objectively dumb because it's the format that results in ambiguity. Again, the point that it's good cause Americans are familiar with it is a subjective criteria, since it only applies to American's experience with using it, whereas the ambiguity of an out of order time span is an objective one.
Only the combination of formats results in ambiguity. Neither format is ambiguous on its own.
Standardization is good, and if someone were to change it should probably be the US given the apparent worldwide consensus otherwise. That doesn't make either format good or bad on its own.
What I take issue with is people acting like the US format is some kind of bizarro nonsense when it in fact makes perfect sense in terms of matching spoken dates. That is hardly a weird basis for a format.
Each has its tradeoffs, and which set of tradeoffs is better is a subjective matter. I agree that d/m/y makes the most sense for an international standard (if not y/m/d), but to claim that the US format itself is somehow objectively bad is silly.
It objectively is, and Ive explained why numerous times.
If you don't have an argument beyond 'it makes sense cause we're used to it', then you don't have an argument about why one is better than the other, you have a weakass dodge the conversation feelgoodism. It is the textbook definition of a subjective criteria.
Learn how to be fucking wrong gracefully. Jesus Christ.
You haven't explained what is objectively wrong other than you don't like it. My argument is more than just being used to it, closely matching verbal convention is useful.
Also, it's funny that you think I'm arguing either is objectively better than the other.
No, it's not, because even in the states you say it like three different ways and the English language is constantly changing.
And I have explained what is objectively wrong with it, it's out of order from a numerical time length standpoint.
How is a lack of magnitude order objectively wrong? A date format is ultimately a language feature, and the US format successfully transmits the needed info just fine within its natural context.
It may seem objective from your perspective, but language is used in many more contexts than those you are familiar with.
Because the English language has no set order to express the 1st of January.
Time lengths are objective, the way we talk about the fifth of November is not.
You don't know what objectively means because you're entirely up to your neck in bias. You care way too much about this thing that does not matter to remotely have an objective view here. It doesn't matter if you think you're being objective, this is clearly some sort of obsession for you.
Lmao bruh, if you don't want to talk about time codes, don't participate in a discussion about time codes.
My god, learn to accept that Americans can be objectively stupid sometimes instead of getting all weirdly defensive.
Flemish here (aka dutch-speaking). We say first June, sixth November etc. English isn't our native language, so M/D/Y is weird as fuck and completely illogical to us.
In Germany we say things like "we meet on the twelfth fifth" (Zwölfter Fünfter), which is the twelfth day of the fifth month. Often times the year is also shortened to only the last two digits, so it could be twelfth fifth twenty-four in dd-mm-yy format.
Of course we also use the names of the months, but sometimes we just number them.