“Europe”, as if there weren’t several languages in Europe with different date formats per language…
None of which start with the month because that would be fuckin stupid
Meh. It’s getting a lot of hate here, but I think it works well in casual short term planning. Context (July) - > precision (15).
If I want to communicate the day in the current month, I just say the day, no month.
ok but by that logic you’d start with the year
No because the year is a super large time; there’s a reason people always say they take a bit to adjust to writing the new year in dates because it’s s long enough period of time that it almost becomes automatic.
For archiving, sure; most other things, no (logically, ISO-8601 is probably the best for most cases, in general, but I’ll die on the hill that MM-DD-YYYY is better than DD-MM-YYYY).
well either you omit the year, or you start with it
americans start with the month and end with the year, which is totally wild
well either you omit the year, or you start with it
Why? Because you say so?
Because it’s consistent that way. Why not is the real question?
Because “context -> precision” is exactly the reason someone earlier gave as reasoning for the American system?
Everyone starts sentences with a capital letter, you shouldn’t be flinging shit mate 😂
nahh f that shit
Again, – within most use cases – it really isn’t.
In your day to day, will you need to know the year of a thing? Probably not; it’s probably with the year you’re currently in.
Do you need to know the day of the month first? Probably not unless it’s within the current month so you need to know the month first.
Telling me “22nd” on a paper means nothing if I don’t know what month we’re referring to; and, if I do need to know the year, – well – it’s always at the the of the date so it’s easy to locate rather than parsing the middle of the date, any.
In your day to day, will you need to know the year of a thing? Probably not; it’s probably with the year you’re currently in.
that’s why I said you could omit it. did you read what I wrote?
, but I’ll die on the hill that MM-DD-YYYY is better than DD-MM-YYYY
Then perish.
the year is a super large time
Not when you’re old… I’ll be 50 this year, they’re flying by.
Exactly. It would be like reading the minute of the clock before the hour.
*15th
Keep that kinda talk up and you’ll go straight to tariff!
MM ≠ MM !!!
I work with international clients and use 2025-01-26 format. Without it… confusion.
That’s an ISO date, and it’s gorgeous. It’s the only way I’ll accept working with dates and timezones, though I’ll make am exception for end-user facing output, and format it according to locale if I’m positive they’re not going to feed into some other app.
Hot take: 2025-Jan-27 is better than 2025-01-27 in monolingual contexts.
The beautiful part of 2025/01/27 is that it can inherently be sorted without formatting.
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Maybe in programming or technical documentation, but no, when I check the date I want to know the day and the month, beyond that, it’s all unnecessary information for everyday use, and we have it right in Europe.
You can’t change my mind. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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You can do 1-26
I don’t know what this means, also I don’t have to adhere to anything, the European format works perfectly well for me, so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
2025-01-26 so it’s 26.01. It’s easy to look up. All you need to know is that the date goes YYY-MM-DD (year -> month -> day). You do the same thing when you write 26.01 instead of 26.01.2025, since you are just dropping information about the year.
Starting out with “you can’t change my mind” is fine but then don’t argue for your point with arguments that can easily be debunked. Use whichever format you like better but don’t pretend that’s more than personal preference at that point.
The big argument for the iso date-time format is lexicographic ordering. If you don’t care about that, then don’t use it.
Just as a side-note: some european countries were in fact considering switching to the iso date-time format but didn’t because it would have been an inconvenience to people already familiar with different formats. Basically the “it’s better but people prefer the older format” thing we have going on in the comment sections right now.
Cheers
don’t argue for your point with arguments that can easily be debunked.
I literally said I don’t know what a thing means (and now that you’ve explained, it’s a useless instruction to give me, since all it does is add extra steps for those of us already perfectly happy with the European format lmfao), and made no assertion beyond my personal preference, kindly get off your fucking high horse.
It’s better but people prefer the older format
The metric system has entered the chat.
1-26 or 01/26 is a way of writing the month and day. in this particular example, it is describing the 26th day of January, or January 26. the year is omitted in this instance because, in this context, it is a way of demonstrating how a month and day can still be conveyed in order of significance without fully adhering to ISO 8601 guidelines.
So it’s just adding the American format (which categorically does not demonstrate how a month and day can still be conveyed in order of significance, but literally the opposite) in to the mix and not providing any help or making things any simpler lol
Thanks for explaining, but if the person who introduced the 1-26 concept in to the conversation (and could have easily just said “MM/DD” to make their point significantly clearer), or the other person with their lecture are actually trying to change my, or anyone else’s mind, or make their personal preference more appealing to others, this (making things more complicated, when they are already perfectly straightforward, just not how they like it) isn’t the fucking way to do it lmmfao
just nitpicking, but technically ISO 8601 does not (currently) permit the omission of the year.
if information is to be omitted, it must be done in ascending order of significance, so you can omit, in order, seconds, minutes, hours, and days.
(if you omit the month, that’s just the year left so why bother with ISO 8601 lmao)
Fair
These people are just too far into the ISO rabbit hole. I completely agree with you that DD.MM.YYYY is the best format for everyday use.
Thank you! 😂
E: I even said how I can see it being useful in some applications, but fuck, if I’m looking at the date it’s almost certainly to see what day it is today, what day (and maybe month) an appointment is, what day some food is going off, stuff like that. I know what month and year it is right now, and if I want to know the time, I look at a clock, not a calendar. If they love extra and often unnecessary information so much they’re free to use whatever format they want, but I’m good, and so are many others, and they just need to learn to be ok with that lmao
Nah. Sort that alphabetically and you end up with a useless list.
And sorting the other formats alphabetically does not yield the same result?
No…?
Okay I don’t think I quite get which part you are sorting alphabetically here.
the “best” format for everyday use is each individual person’s personal preference.
you may be more used to DDMMYYYY due to culture, language, upbringing, and usage. in the same vein, i am more used to YYYYMMDD because in chinese we go 年月日 (year-month-day), and it makes organizing files and spreadsheet entries much more intuitive anyways.
Well in that case people should stop complaining about us wanting to use DD.MM.YYYY it’s perfectly fine and the only format that should be shot on sight is MM.DD.YYYY
You can’t change my mind.
That’s not a good thing. That attitude limits you from improving how you do things because you’ve gotten emotionally attached to some arbitrary … never mind. Have a nice day.
finally a correct version of this diagram
I often have to refrain myself from using ISO-8601 in regular emails. In a business context the MM/DD/YYYY is so much more prevalent that I don’t want to stand out.
Filenames on a share drive though? ISO-8601 all the way idgaf
My stupid ass read this top to bottom and I was confused why anyone would start with seconds
i never saw year first in Europe.
You’re reading the post backwards.
This pyramid visualisation doesn’t work for me, unless you read time starting with seconds.
A pyramid is built bottom to top, not top to bottom. That’s also one of the strengths of the ISO format. You can add/remove layers for arbitrary granularity and still have a valid date.
Yeah, but people read top to bottom. The best way to do it would be to have upside down pyramids. With the biggest blocks at the top representing the biggest unit of time (YYYY) and the smallest blocks at the bottom representing seconds & smaller.
What do you think this is some sort of pyramid scheme?
Offene Feldschlacht betritt den Raum
2025-01-26-11-40-20
I get it, just pyramids are misleading, also year-month-day is better because resulting number always grows. 😺
A bit out of context, but is your username and instance a reference to nescafe?
Not really but now that you mentioned it, it will! 😄
That’s an interesting coincidence
2025-01-26T11:40:20, you mean?
Hold on there pal that time zone is ambiguous. Did you mean 11:40:20 UTC? If so, don’t forget your Z!
I mean 11:40:20 in what NodaTime would call a “LocalDateTime”. i.e., irrespective of the time zone.
(And incidentally, if you’re working in C# I strongly recommend the NodaTime library. And even if you’re not, I strongly recommend watching the lectures about dates and times by the NodaTime developer, who demonstrates a way of thinking about dates and times that is so much more thoughtful than what most standard libraries allow for without very careful attention paid by the programmer.)
Yeah
Mmm US military date and time is fun too.
DDMMMYYYYHHMM and time zone identifier. So 26JAN20251841Z.
So much fun.
So virtually human unreadable and the letters make machine readability a pain in the ass?
Honestly look very readable to me, though I’m not sure on the timezone bit. Maybe they left it out? Ohterwise it’s 26th of January 2025, 18:41
It’s gonna be problematic when there’s 5 digit years, but other than that it’s… not good, but definitely less ambiguous than any “normally formatted” date where DD <= 12. Is it MM/DD or DD/MM? We’ll never fucking know!
Of course, YYYY-MM-DD is still the king because it’s both human readable and sortable as a regular string without converting it into a datetime object or anything.
All you’d have to do to make it much more readable is separate the time and the year with some kind of separator like a hyphen, slash or dot. Also “Z” is the time zone, denoting UTC (see also military time zones)
Oh, duh. It’s why all my timestamps have Z’s in the database lmao
Thing is, you’re right that the separation would help, but this is still way less ambiguous that MM/DD vs DD/MM if you ask me.
As my friend used to say, there’s dumb and then there’s Army Dumb.
I don’t know why anyone would ever argue against this. Least precise to most precise. Like every other number we use.
(I don’t know if this is true for EVERY numerical measure, but I’m sure someone will let me know of one that doesn’t)
They are all equally prescise. American one is stupid just like their stupid ass imperial units. European one is two systems slapped together(since they are rarely used together and when they are its the iso format) and iso is what european standard should be.
You misunderstand my comment.
I’m saying the digits in a date should be printed in an order dictated by which units give the most precision.
A year is the least precise, a month is the next least, followed by day, hour, minute, second, millisecond.
You are looking not for precision but for largest to smallest, descending order. this is distinct from precision, a measure of how finely measured something is. 2025.07397 is actually more precise than 2025/01/27, but is measured by the largest increment.
Largest to smallest is also wrong. In 2025/01/28, the 28 is larger than the 01.
It should be “most significant” to “least significant”
largest to smallest is correct. 1 mile is larger than 20 meters. if i had specified numerical value or somesuch, maybe you’d be correct. though significance works as well.
Largest to smallest is at best ambiguous. It can refer to the size of the number itself, or the size of the unit.
There is a reason this exact concept in maths/computer science is known as the “significance” of the digit. Eg. The “least significant bit” in binary is the last one.
significance refers to a measurement certainty about a number itself, especially its precision! and is unrelated to the magnitude/scale. the number and dimension “2.5634 mm” has more significant digits than the number “5,000 mm”, though the most significant digit is 2 and 5 respectively, and least significant 4 and 5 respectively. this is true if i rewrite it as 0.0025634 m and 5 m. it does work for doing what you say in this case because a date is equivalent to a single number, but is not correct in other situations. that’s why i said it does work here.
largest to smallest increment is completely adequate, and describes the actual goal here well. most things are ambiguous if you try hard enough.
And to address the argument on precision versus descending. I disagree. An instrument counting seconds is more precise than a machine counting minutes, hours, days, weeks, months etc… And that holds true through the chain. The precision is in the unit.
the unit is just a report of orientation, not magnitude. if you have a digital counter you are limited by the precision of the digital counter, not the units chosen. an analog measurement however is limited instead by other uncertanties. precision has, genuinely, no direct relationship to units. precision is a statistical concept, not a dimensional one.
We can debate this all day. And I can’t honestly say that I would take either side in a purely semantics argument.
But the wording comes directly from RFC3339 which is, to me, the definitive source for useful date representation.
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3339.txt
5.1. Ordering
If date and time components are ordered from least precise to most precise, then a useful property is achieved. Assuming that the time zones of the dates and times are the same (e.g., all in UTC), expressed using the same string (e.g., all “Z” or all “+00:00”), and all times have the same number of fractional second digits, then the date and time strings may be sorted as strings (e.g., using the strcmp() function in C) and a time-ordered sequence will result.
They chose poor words for this.
Sorting with either the month or the day ahead of the year results in more immediately relevant identifiable information being displayed first. The year doesn’t change very often, so it’s not something you necessarily need to scan past for every entry. The hour changes so frequently as to be irrelevant in many cases. Both the month and the day represent a more useful range of time that you might want to see immediately.
Personally, I find the month first to be more practical because it tells you how relatively recent something is on a scale that actually lasts a while. Going day first means if you’ve got files sorted this way you’re going to have days of the month listed more prominently than months themselves, so the first of January through the first of December will all be closer together then the first and second of January in your list. Impractical.
Year first makes sense if you’re keeping a list around for multiple years, but the application there is less useful in the short term. It’s probably simpler to just have individual folders for years and then also tack it on after days to make sure it’s not missing.
Also, like, this format is how physical calendars work assuming you don’t have a whole stack of them sitting in front of you.
By keeping years in different folders you are just implicitly creating the ISO format: eg.
2025/"04/28.xls"Well, not really. Sort of.
2025/“04-28-2025.xls”
You still want the year in the title format so you have it if it ends up on its own somewhere.
I know, why don’t we all agree to agree and use every single possible format within a shared spreadsheet
Oh god it’s so true…
YYYY.MM.DD HH.MM.SS, as eru ilúvatar intended
I think I went to high school with that guy.
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
Ftfy
DD-MMM-YYYY master race
Don’t you mean: “Right there! Stop you, I’m going to.”
Yoda-ass date structure.
What day, of what month, of what year is it? It’s ordered by importance dammit!
…looks more like i’m you, gonna right, stop there…
25th of July, 2024 is confusing?
There’s no ambiguity with the format, since it’s impossible to mix up month and day
No. But 2024, the 25th of July is clumsy both spoken and written.
July 25th, 2024 is okay but gives off middle child vibes.
25th of July, 2024 is ordered small to big, rolls off the tongue and when written nicely seperates both sets of numbers for ease of readability.
The only other alternative I will accept is Julian dates. Today is Day 26 of 2025.
July 25th, 2024 is okay but gives off middle child vibes.
The fuck does that even mean? This is literally how people speak dates out loud.
It means it gives off middle child vibes. What more do you want?
People round these parts say the day first, then the month. Anything else is attention seeking middle child vibes.
yes, when the month is written non-numerically (and the year is written with four digits) there is no ambiguity.
but, the three formats in OP’s post are all about writing things numerically.
In some contexts, writing out the full month name can be clearer (at least for speakers of the language you’re writing in), but it takes more (and a variable amount of) space and the strings cannot be sorted without first parsing them into date objects.
Anywhere you want or need to write a date numerically, ISO-8601 is obviously much better and should always be used (except in the many cases where the stupid formats are required by custom or law).
That’s what my work uses
Wrong format. DD.MM.YYYY.
