KITCHENER – Local man Dalton Strickland, whose data entry job regularly requires him to read dates off a form and put them into a computer, literally never knows which date is the day and which is the month unless the day is above 12. “Are we using the American MM-DD-YYYY system or the rest of […]
Because he didn’t know about ISO8601. The only correct date format, especially in Canada.
ISO8601 is great and all, but even without a common standard, I feel it should either be largest to smallest unit, or smallest to largest. YMD or DMY. Anything else is just asking for misunderstandings.
I’m not disagreeing in general, but I need to point out that this is like saying you should write Arabic numerals in order of decreasing powers of 10 because it autosorts on a computer.
It’s the reverse. Computers automatically sort Arabic numerals and dates written in decreasing powers because those are the correct formats.
ISO8601 is great and all, but even without a common standard, I feel it should either be largest to smallest unit, or smallest to largest. YMD or DMY. Anything else is just asking for misunderstandings.
YMD is the way to go, because it auto-sorts on a computer.
Even when you tuck on the time, or would you prefer 59:46:13-14:10:2024 :-) ?
Are computers the most important thing?
Usually when I read a date I hardly care about year, because most events I read about are within a year
I’m not disagreeing in general, but I need to point out that this is like saying you should write Arabic numerals in order of decreasing powers of 10 because it autosorts on a computer.
It’s the reverse. Computers automatically sort Arabic numerals and dates written in decreasing powers because those are the correct formats.
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Well that throws out DD-MM-YYYY because it’s second smallest, smallest, fourth smallest, third smallest…
Heh… not what I meant, but technically correct