My plea to all Developers
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Please, for the love of all things good in this world Stop using mm/dd/yyyy for the numerical date format Only the US, US jurisdictions, and Swahili in Kenya use this format, so 6/7/2021 means two completely different things to someone in the US and someone in the UK. Or NZ, Or Oz. Or, well, anywhere else really. Please: make dates unambiguous. Use month abbreviations like 6-Jul. Use yyyy-mm-dd if you have to. Or go crazy and sniff a user's preferences but that doesn't actually work because everyone in the US seems to think Canada uses the US format. Canada doesn't use the US format: It merely understands the US format which I find astounding. Show a Canadian 6/7 and they'll tell you the correct interpretation without context. It's a skill akin to national mind reading and I do not understand how they do it.
cheers Chris Maunder
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most people do not write in ISO-8601. Most people want to see their dates in a familiar format; a format they write in. I know you don't give an elephant's turd, but I had to say it none the less. :-D
I (usually) write in ISO 8601 for the complete avoidance of doubt, my own and anyone else's. Unless I know that my audience will actually be confused by ISO 8601, that is!
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Yes. And I wish the USA will bite the bullet for once and all and drop the idiotic imperial system and go METRIC!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
I see that as less of an issue as it is not (usually[1]) prone to lack of clarity as dd-mm vs. mm-dd is. One can measure accurately in Imperial or Metric, so it's purely a matter of personal preference. I see nothing inherently idiotic about Imperial. It's quirky and inconsistent but then so are many things. Footnote:- 1: Yes, yes, I know that some very expensive things have blown up or gone off course due to Metric/Imperials mixups. But that was due to lack of project management clarity and QC/QA, rather than the existence of two measurement systems.
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Please, for the love of all things good in this world Stop using mm/dd/yyyy for the numerical date format Only the US, US jurisdictions, and Swahili in Kenya use this format, so 6/7/2021 means two completely different things to someone in the US and someone in the UK. Or NZ, Or Oz. Or, well, anywhere else really. Please: make dates unambiguous. Use month abbreviations like 6-Jul. Use yyyy-mm-dd if you have to. Or go crazy and sniff a user's preferences but that doesn't actually work because everyone in the US seems to think Canada uses the US format. Canada doesn't use the US format: It merely understands the US format which I find astounding. Show a Canadian 6/7 and they'll tell you the correct interpretation without context. It's a skill akin to national mind reading and I do not understand how they do it.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Please, for the love of all things good in this world Stop using mm/dd/yyyy for the numerical date format Only the US, US jurisdictions, and Swahili in Kenya use this format, so 6/7/2021 means two completely different things to someone in the US and someone in the UK. Or NZ, Or Oz. Or, well, anywhere else really. Please: make dates unambiguous. Use month abbreviations like 6-Jul. Use yyyy-mm-dd if you have to. Or go crazy and sniff a user's preferences but that doesn't actually work because everyone in the US seems to think Canada uses the US format. Canada doesn't use the US format: It merely understands the US format which I find astounding. Show a Canadian 6/7 and they'll tell you the correct interpretation without context. It's a skill akin to national mind reading and I do not understand how they do it.
cheers Chris Maunder
As long as they will be things like national pride, country specific formats, as dumb as they may be, will not disappear. It will probably take decades to get rid of mm/dd/yyyy (which, while I understand the write-it-as-you-speak-it, has overall more disadvantages than advantages) It will take centuries to settle for imperial or metric ( I prefer metric because more straight forward to me, but I don't care as long as we settle for something) Flying cars is probably the only way of getting everybody to use the same side of the road for driving, and I am not even convinced about that. Maybe this will not be an issue anymore with autonomous driving.( You would not imagine what a waste of resources and time developing a left hand drive and right hand drive version of a car is). This, as well as many other things, would have been solved a long time ago if people had common sense. But ...
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Yes. And I wish the USA will bite the bullet for once and all and drop the idiotic imperial system and go METRIC!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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And I wish the UK would drop the idiotic metric system and revert to imperial. One of the many benefits of which, is that people need to use their brains when thinking about and calculating weights and measures.
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And I wish the UK would drop the idiotic metric system and revert to imperial. One of the many benefits of which, is that people need to use their brains when thinking about and calculating weights and measures.
Yes this so much more logical and less idiotic than the metric system.
It is ordained that 3 grains of barley dry and round do make an inch, 12 inches make 1 foot, 3 feet make 1 yard, 5 yards and a half make a perch, and 40 perches in length and 4 in breadth make an acre.
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Yes this so much more logical and less idiotic than the metric system.
It is ordained that 3 grains of barley dry and round do make an inch, 12 inches make 1 foot, 3 feet make 1 yard, 5 yards and a half make a perch, and 40 perches in length and 4 in breadth make an acre.
Tony Hill wrote:
It is ordained that ...
Yea, verily! I've seen the light*, brother! :) * And it is an approaching train. Seriously, the only inherent advantages of the Metric system are that: 1. It eases conversions between units (cm in a kilometer is much easier to calculate than inches in a mile) 2. The Metric system has a MASS unit, while the Imperial system has a WEIGHT unit (of importance to natural scientists and to anyone or anything that goes into space) OTOH, only the US, Liberia, and Myanmar [still use the Imperial system](https://www.statista.com/chart/18300/countries-using-the-metric-or-the-imperial-system/), and the US, at least, uses a debased version where there are 16 fluid ounces to the pint, rather than the divinely ordained 20. Even in the US, scientists are taught the Metric system. I would say that the battle for metricization has been won.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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5teveH wrote:
Maybe we could get everyone to drive on the proper side of the road too. i.e. the left middle.
FTFY :D
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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And I wish the UK would drop the idiotic metric system and revert to imperial. One of the many benefits of which, is that people need to use their brains when thinking about and calculating weights and measures.
I know what you mean, I cannot visualise things in metric sizes I have to convert them mentally to feet and inches ( or whatever ), metric can be ambiguous to, some people say ( usually related to the building trade ) you need a 60*40 or a 600*400 - there is no ambiguity in you need something 2 foot by three foot.
"I didn't mention the bats - he'd see them soon enough" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Yes. And I wish the USA will bite the bullet for once and all and drop the idiotic imperial system and go METRIC!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
I hope you're aware that metric time isn't dd/mm/yyyy nor ISO8601 or similar. In the original metric system, 250 or so years ago, a week was ten days. And every day was divided into decidays and centidays. This (luckily?) didn't catch on. But in 1954 when they created the SI-system they settled for the second as a base for time. So metric time is measured in decasecond, hectosecond, kilosecond or megasecond or gigasecond. I prefer ISO8601! :)
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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Tony Hill wrote:
It is ordained that ...
Yea, verily! I've seen the light*, brother! :) * And it is an approaching train. Seriously, the only inherent advantages of the Metric system are that: 1. It eases conversions between units (cm in a kilometer is much easier to calculate than inches in a mile) 2. The Metric system has a MASS unit, while the Imperial system has a WEIGHT unit (of importance to natural scientists and to anyone or anything that goes into space) OTOH, only the US, Liberia, and Myanmar [still use the Imperial system](https://www.statista.com/chart/18300/countries-using-the-metric-or-the-imperial-system/), and the US, at least, uses a debased version where there are 16 fluid ounces to the pint, rather than the divinely ordained 20. Even in the US, scientists are taught the Metric system. I would say that the battle for metricization has been won.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
Apart from the fact the imperial system has nice familiar names there are no advantages to using imperial but I guess some people will never change. I am only glad we were using the metric system when I did my engineering college course as some of the other imperial units are completely nuts.
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Please, for the love of all things good in this world Stop using mm/dd/yyyy for the numerical date format Only the US, US jurisdictions, and Swahili in Kenya use this format, so 6/7/2021 means two completely different things to someone in the US and someone in the UK. Or NZ, Or Oz. Or, well, anywhere else really. Please: make dates unambiguous. Use month abbreviations like 6-Jul. Use yyyy-mm-dd if you have to. Or go crazy and sniff a user's preferences but that doesn't actually work because everyone in the US seems to think Canada uses the US format. Canada doesn't use the US format: It merely understands the US format which I find astounding. Show a Canadian 6/7 and they'll tell you the correct interpretation without context. It's a skill akin to national mind reading and I do not understand how they do it.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Please, for the love of all things good in this world Stop using mm/dd/yyyy for the numerical date format Only the US, US jurisdictions, and Swahili in Kenya use this format, so 6/7/2021 means two completely different things to someone in the US and someone in the UK. Or NZ, Or Oz. Or, well, anywhere else really. Please: make dates unambiguous. Use month abbreviations like 6-Jul. Use yyyy-mm-dd if you have to. Or go crazy and sniff a user's preferences but that doesn't actually work because everyone in the US seems to think Canada uses the US format. Canada doesn't use the US format: It merely understands the US format which I find astounding. Show a Canadian 6/7 and they'll tell you the correct interpretation without context. It's a skill akin to national mind reading and I do not understand how they do it.
cheers Chris Maunder
I've been using
"yyyy/mm/dd"for years, unless specifically told not to by my employer (which happens more often than you'd think).".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
Yes this so much more logical and less idiotic than the metric system.
It is ordained that 3 grains of barley dry and round do make an inch, 12 inches make 1 foot, 3 feet make 1 yard, 5 yards and a half make a perch, and 40 perches in length and 4 in breadth make an acre.
But all the measurements are based on real objects that exist in the world about us. The metric system is just random numbers. For example who can remember (or visualise) that one meter is the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second?
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Please, for the love of all things good in this world Stop using mm/dd/yyyy for the numerical date format Only the US, US jurisdictions, and Swahili in Kenya use this format, so 6/7/2021 means two completely different things to someone in the US and someone in the UK. Or NZ, Or Oz. Or, well, anywhere else really. Please: make dates unambiguous. Use month abbreviations like 6-Jul. Use yyyy-mm-dd if you have to. Or go crazy and sniff a user's preferences but that doesn't actually work because everyone in the US seems to think Canada uses the US format. Canada doesn't use the US format: It merely understands the US format which I find astounding. Show a Canadian 6/7 and they'll tell you the correct interpretation without context. It's a skill akin to national mind reading and I do not understand how they do it.
cheers Chris Maunder
US method mirrors how it is said when spoken. We don't say "the sixth or April"; we say "April sixth" - and ergo, that is how we write it. How do you normally say that in Canada (for those parts that have both day and night). Even done numerically, only, we follow the spoken word. (both version put the year in the rear). In other languages they do say things like 'ersten Mai" - that's their problem and their way - I didn't bitch to them about changing the arse-backwards word order. That's their problem. Now, for the "Euro" version - it sorts like shyte . . . worse than the US version sorts, and that a turd and a half. The year should go first, then the month, then the day - a four-digit year, at that, lest, for example, something just over a century old be classified as very current. So that's that. I was going to use all-caps so the forgoing instructive blurb is taken and accepted as order that must be obeyed, but, feeling generous this morning I'll let you spend a bit more time adapting to before, well, THE SHIFT-LOCK.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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As long as they will be things like national pride, country specific formats, as dumb as they may be, will not disappear. It will probably take decades to get rid of mm/dd/yyyy (which, while I understand the write-it-as-you-speak-it, has overall more disadvantages than advantages) It will take centuries to settle for imperial or metric ( I prefer metric because more straight forward to me, but I don't care as long as we settle for something) Flying cars is probably the only way of getting everybody to use the same side of the road for driving, and I am not even convinced about that. Maybe this will not be an issue anymore with autonomous driving.( You would not imagine what a waste of resources and time developing a left hand drive and right hand drive version of a car is). This, as well as many other things, would have been solved a long time ago if people had common sense. But ...
Rage wrote:
You would not imagine what a waste of resources and time developing a left hand drive and right hand drive version of a car is
The car needs to be able to do both; and it should know where to switch. There's people coming from England using the canal; if their cars only can drive left, you'd get very dangerous holidays and visits.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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context? Also, I agree if the app/site will never be used outside the United States (i.e. internal business apps and sites).
Slacker007 wrote:
context?
Probably he saw a date like 4/7 and was unsure if it was tomorrow, or 3 months from now.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius
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I've been using
"yyyy/mm/dd"for years, unless specifically told not to by my employer (which happens more often than you'd think).".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013#realJSOP wrote:
I've been using
"yyyy/mm/dd"for years, unless specifically told not to by my employer (which happens more often than you'd think).Same here. Unfortunately Duhsigners, ProderpOwners, and PointygramManagers live in a reality distortion field where everyone uses the same date format they do. At least those nitwits have no control over the backend, so it's `DateTimeOffset`s everywhere until the presentation code at least.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius
