Only American and Swahili use mm/dd for dates
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder
Actually, a lot of us in business in Canada use YYYY/MM/DD for our business and personal affairs. Indeed, it is the CSA (Canadian Standard's Association) standard since the 1980's, and almost all government forms etc.., in Canada use YYYY/MM/DD. We started to made the switch in the 1980's due to the upcoming millennium and basically to get rid of all the stupid problems between 9/11/xxxx 11/9/xxxx etc.., And yes, when our dealings are primarily with Americans, we use mm/dd/yyyy because it is more profitable to do so, and your other reasons for us using the American method are true too. And yes, most Canadians, if the form doesn't spell it out, use dd/mm/yyyy. Fortunately, no Canadians are confused when those of us that use yyyy/mm/dd write out a date(Though using yy/mm/dd still causes problems and will until 32/1/1 Unlike what I suspect is 'political comment' in some of the other replies, my following is not: I think it is a tragedy when anyone is killed regardless of their country of origin, religion or skin colour. However, I always had trouble remembering what the most common NON-standard in Canada (my country) was until '9/11'. Because the phrase 9/11 lets me remember that Americans use mm/dd. So now, whenever I'm trying to read a date from a Canadian or American that is not in our CSA format, I just remember '9/11' and then I know which non-standard they are likely using. >And I don't know how their brains don't explode. And our brains don't explode because we easily understand both formats (we just have no idea which it is when the day is < 12 and worse when the year is less than 31 AND the day is < 12) mm/dd/yyyy is the way it is spoken in English: "April 1st, 2051" dd/mm/yyyy is mathematically logical: "least important to most important" yyyy/mm/dd is the obvious 'you can't make it confusing'. And yes I realize if Americans ever changed to yyyy/mm/dd some people somewhere would probably decide to use yyyy/dd/mm just so they don't do it the way the Americans do it. But I suspect/hope rational heads would prevail. I've only once see a company use yyyy/dd/mm and they switched within days of doing that.
peter horwood aka Madman Pierre, VP Development, Asset Pro Solutions Inc.
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I usually use yyyy-mm-dd, except when my audience can't figure out simple things. Not only is it efficient to sort by date, but, if I am unsure about the date, I leave off the day (yyyy-mm) very simply, and it is clear that I am using yyyy-mm-dd, because no one that I know of would use yyyy-dd-mm, so the format is always clearly understood. Even computers understand it.
Sadly, if/when Americans start to use YYYY-MM-DD (like my country's actual Canadian Standard) - I suspect some people around the world will start to use YYYY-DD-MM just because they refuse to do anything the way American's do.
peter horwood aka Madman Pierre, VP Development, Asset Pro Solutions Inc.
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As I said, the rest of the page is in English too...
Truth, James
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Actually, a lot of us in business in Canada use YYYY/MM/DD for our business and personal affairs. Indeed, it is the CSA (Canadian Standard's Association) standard since the 1980's, and almost all government forms etc.., in Canada use YYYY/MM/DD. We started to made the switch in the 1980's due to the upcoming millennium and basically to get rid of all the stupid problems between 9/11/xxxx 11/9/xxxx etc.., And yes, when our dealings are primarily with Americans, we use mm/dd/yyyy because it is more profitable to do so, and your other reasons for us using the American method are true too. And yes, most Canadians, if the form doesn't spell it out, use dd/mm/yyyy. Fortunately, no Canadians are confused when those of us that use yyyy/mm/dd write out a date(Though using yy/mm/dd still causes problems and will until 32/1/1 Unlike what I suspect is 'political comment' in some of the other replies, my following is not: I think it is a tragedy when anyone is killed regardless of their country of origin, religion or skin colour. However, I always had trouble remembering what the most common NON-standard in Canada (my country) was until '9/11'. Because the phrase 9/11 lets me remember that Americans use mm/dd. So now, whenever I'm trying to read a date from a Canadian or American that is not in our CSA format, I just remember '9/11' and then I know which non-standard they are likely using. >And I don't know how their brains don't explode. And our brains don't explode because we easily understand both formats (we just have no idea which it is when the day is < 12 and worse when the year is less than 31 AND the day is < 12) mm/dd/yyyy is the way it is spoken in English: "April 1st, 2051" dd/mm/yyyy is mathematically logical: "least important to most important" yyyy/mm/dd is the obvious 'you can't make it confusing'. And yes I realize if Americans ever changed to yyyy/mm/dd some people somewhere would probably decide to use yyyy/dd/mm just so they don't do it the way the Americans do it. But I suspect/hope rational heads would prevail. I've only once see a company use yyyy/dd/mm and they switched within days of doing that.
peter horwood aka Madman Pierre, VP Development, Asset Pro Solutions Inc.
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mm/dd/yyyy is the way it is spoken in English: "April 1st, 2051"
Actually, it's the way Americans say it. Apparently, European English speakers would say "The 1st of April, 2051".
Truth, James
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder
And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd
I can answer this one. I've been working on an international shipping module for a website for the past several months. FedEx, USPS, etc. have Byzantine rules for international shipping, different for every destination country, and of course, each shipper has their own set of Byzantine rules. Then there are the customs requirements for each country. It's a nightmare!
Da Bomb
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder
I don't use MM/DD/YYYY to be nice, I use it when stupid people hard code the US date format into their application instead of using the region settings, or when the corporate mandated Chrome browser doesn't know that the whole world isn't the USA. Then I have to convert it. Officially Canada uses ISO 8601, YYYY-MM-DD. Which some will inevitably abbreviate to the even more vague YY-MM-DD, just to make things a bit worse.
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Base 12 would indeed be better than base 10 for "normal" usage, but you forgot to mention that it's also more directly related to cyclic or sinusoidal measurements. Why? The most common angle measurement factor is 15 degrees e.g. one twenty-fourth of a circle. All of the common fractions of cyclic measurement are multiples of 15 degrees, or twenty-fourths of a circle (or twelfths of a half-circle). But regardless, the metric family of measurement systems is superior not because it uses base 10, but because it uses a COMMON base for all measurements. If that base were 12, and our numbering system were also base 12, it would remain superior to the clapboard mosaic that is the English/Imperial/American "system" of measurement.
tl;dr everything yet, but here is my 2 cents so far: I agree that a base 12 number system would be best, 1/3 would be represented as 0.4. I think the word you wanted was claptrap. As to the American date format, I think it follows our speech pattern. In the original example we would say "May twenty fifth", so in England and Australia do you say "Twenty five May"? (I think I have heard this before). As to Metric vs English/Imperial/American we have a saying 'There are 2 kinds of of nations, those that walked on the moon and those that use the Metric system' (I kid, I think NASA has always used Metric).
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or, in American, the eleventh of September?
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
Nope, we would typically say "September eleventh". And as to an earlier comment many of us in America do speak the Queen's English. I think it has been proven that folks in the state of Georgia speak as Queen Elizabeth the first would have. (Just stirring the pot).
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tl;dr everything yet, but here is my 2 cents so far: I agree that a base 12 number system would be best, 1/3 would be represented as 0.4. I think the word you wanted was claptrap. As to the American date format, I think it follows our speech pattern. In the original example we would say "May twenty fifth", so in England and Australia do you say "Twenty five May"? (I think I have heard this before). As to Metric vs English/Imperial/American we have a saying 'There are 2 kinds of of nations, those that walked on the moon and those that use the Metric system' (I kid, I think NASA has always used Metric).
As an engineer, I get to be fluent in both systems. Conversions between the two can get you into a lot of trouble - NASA lost a Mars probe because of it. I MUCH prefer metric/SI units, even though I still use English/Imperial in everyday usage and for some professional terms; altitude in feet, speed in knots, weight (NOT mass) in pounds. And don't even get me started on Fahrenheit vs. Kelvin and affine spaces ... The nicest thing about SI from my point of view is that when you make a mistake, you're off by one or more orders of magnitude, and it's easy to notice. With English/Imperial, errors are often not so apparent. More than once I've tried to explain to a fellow (but not computer savvy) engineer that 0.4 (decimal) is a repeating fraction in binary. Base-10 floating representation in binary causes all sorts of issues for numerical methods which are not unlike unit conversions.
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tl;dr everything yet, but here is my 2 cents so far: I agree that a base 12 number system would be best, 1/3 would be represented as 0.4. I think the word you wanted was claptrap. As to the American date format, I think it follows our speech pattern. In the original example we would say "May twenty fifth", so in England and Australia do you say "Twenty five May"? (I think I have heard this before). As to Metric vs English/Imperial/American we have a saying 'There are 2 kinds of of nations, those that walked on the moon and those that use the Metric system' (I kid, I think NASA has always used Metric).
And for dates, either DAY MON YEAR, where MON is a three letter abbreviation (25 MAY 2016), or YEARMONTHDAY(20160526), sometimes with time appended, which sorts numerically very nicely. And always add the leading zero in either case.
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder
Time is a slippery beast. You think you have it figured out, then stuff like this comes up. I guess that's why we're paid the big $? :)
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder
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We have decent coffee now. Those Central/South American puppet dictatorships needed to be put to useful work (for us), and cocaine and bananas weren't keeping them busy enough.
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Just how often do you need your left to change gear, and how often do you need your right to show the guy overtaking you what you think of him? See? ;) Also, I rather use my strong right hand to pull the handbrake when I do a U-turn at full speed :cool: On a more serious note, many cars nowadays have automatic transmission, and most have power assisted steering. Boring :zzz:
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
American cars almost all have automatic gearboxes, but that's only because the daft sods kept taking their stronger hand off the wheel to change gears!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder
We have many international customers (I'm in the US). I've been aware of the issue a long time and my tendency is to write the name of the month. Even so, I tend to write either 2016 May 26 or 26 May 2016. Is anyone aware of ISO 8601, the international standard on date and time? It promotes the YYYY-MM-DD format as well as 24-hour time HH:MM (another thing the US does not use as much as many other countries). We still have one program running here that I wrote in 1991 for a DOS-based process control. It also logged temperature from different thermistors (fed to an ADC). The log file had a YYMMDD.log style name.
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So what's this "fourth of July" thing I keep hearing about?
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris- That's easy, the "Fourth of July" (or Independence Day) is celebrated on July fourth! Also, good tea is widely available here. Typically I choose Twinings.
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In Mumbai they drive on any part of the road that's free. I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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Forogar wrote:
Actually, I like the coffee.
You're right, the coffee's good. It's a good cup of tea that is impossible to find anywhere. Serves them right for ditching in Boston harbour.
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a good cup of tea that is impossible to find
Too true! Until I moved to the US I mostly drank tea, now I mostly drink coffee, not because I like coffee better but because good tea is only available when I make it myself from re-imported tea from the UK!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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mm/dd/yyyy is the way it is spoken in English: "April 1st, 2051"
Actually, it's the way Americans say it. Apparently, European English speakers would say "The 1st of April, 2051".
Truth, James
Wouldn't that be the Calends of April? :suss:
_______________________________________________________________ Ah don't lean on me man, cause you can't afford the ticket
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Oh, and Micronesia. At least according to Wikipedia. So why does pretty much every US based service that caters to a worldwide audience use mm/dd/yyyy as a date format Latest example this hour is VS team services "Access issues with Visual Studio Team Services – 5/25 – Investigating". 5/25 = 25 May. That's easy. But when I see 6/7 or 10/8 I have to manually check the site and see what culture they are based in. No one in the US (I'm guessing - apart from ex-pats) worry about this. Or are probably even aware of this issue. Everyone else in every other country is aware of this issue. Everyone in Canada manages to deal with it. And I don't know how their brains don't explode. Canada uses dd/mm/yyyy. Except when it uses mm/dd/yyyy because either it's a US based company, they are using a US based system, they are trying to be nice to their US based customers, because they just forgot to use dd/mm/yyyy or because they know it's me and so they deliberately use an ambiguous date format to do my head in. Date formats in Canada are totally and completely messed up. So: Why, in this day and age, do those in the US, when writing for an international audience, still use mm/dd/yyyy? (And I'll add another one: Why do companies in the US find it impossible to ship outside the US? It's very odd) OK, back to hitting refresh several times a second waiting for Team Services to come back online.
cheers Chris Maunder