Idle Forums Joined Date Histogram

[elmuerte]

"October 11th" isn't useful to determine age, October 1990 is. The day loses usefulness quickly when the difference in time increases.

as for processing it:

1990 -> I know it about something about 19 years ago

10 -> ah.. somewhere in October, 19 years ago

11 -> ok... so it's the 11th of October 19 years ago

anyway... as I said earlier, I prefer using YYYY-MM-DD because it is less confusing (and it's also complete, I never use YY, always YYYY)

[Chris]

  elmuerte said:

"October 11th" isn't useful to determine age, October 1990 is. The day loses usefulness quickly when the difference in time increases.

as for processing it:

1990 -> I know it about something about 19 years ago

10 -> ah.. somewhere in October, 19 years ago

11 -> ok... so it's the 11th of October 19 years ago

anyway... as I said earlier, I prefer using YYYY-MM-DD because it is less confusing (and it's also complete, I never use YY, always YYYY)

And if there are a bunch of dates happening this year or next year--for example, events to attend--the actual year portion of the date is not necessary. When naming files and things like that, I use YYMMDD (there are very few situations in which I actually need a four-digit year to usefully identify a date), but otherwise in writing I use MM/DD/YY, because that's how you actually read a date aloud.

It just depends on the particular context.

(As an aside, I hope you do in fact process dates you read in the way you illustrated, because that's awesome. It's like an adventure game protagonist.)

[elmuerte]

YYYY-MM-DD without the YYYY is MM-DD, thus much like you would read it aloud. Reading has a lot to do with recognizing groups of glyphs. When you see something like YYYY-MM-DD you would instantly recognize it as a date, and therefor you could easily skip the YYYY "prefix" and continue with the MM-DD.

Of course it's a matter of getting used to the format, but it really makes things easier. It will be quite easy to find a date on a page of text

[SignorSuperdouche]

  Chris said:

in writing I use MM/DD/YY, because that's how you actually read a date aloud.

In the UK you'd always say the date out loud as DD/MM/YY because, I assume, that's how it's written over here. I guess it's just what you're used to.

Either way, I totall agree that most useful part of a date depends completely on the context. The reason splitting up dates into days months and years is so useful is that you can compare them across both small and large scales, depending on your need, all in one system. Arguing about which part is the most important seems silly.

That said putting the most significant (by which I mean largest scale, not necessarily the most important) digits first is how we use basically all numbers, it's odd that we don't do it or dates.

[brkl]

I'll just use an example to illustrate my view:

If someone comes to you and asks if you could help them move on the 19th, you're not going say "Oh, the 19th of which year and which month? I don't want to mark it on the wrong decade." No, what you're going to say is, "Uhh, sorry, I've got a prior engagement." Because moving is a bitch.

[toblix]

  elmuerte said:

"October 11th" isn't useful to determine age, October 1990 is. The day loses usefulness quickly when the difference in time increases.

as for processing it:

1990 -> I know it about something about 19 years ago

10 -> ah.. somewhere in October, 19 years ago

11 -> ok... so it's the 11th of October 19 years ago

anyway... as I said earlier, I prefer using YYYY-MM-DD because it is less confusing (and it's also complete, I never use YY, always YYYY)

Yeah, you totally narrow it down as you read it from left to right, and it makes sense when compared to hour:minute:second:millisecond:etc, but you could take your processing method and make an even better format then. After all, you have to read four digits before you know the year. If we wrote it like this:

419901011

, the first digit indicating how many of the following digits indicated the year, it would make for an even better gradual understanding. Now we'll only have to red two digits to know that we're in the year interval 1000-1999.

Chronological sorting of calendar dates is one obvious area where a format with decreasing precision makes sense, but usually you're still reading the whole date, right? Not only that, but if one is using the argument that it's easier for computers to sort (not saying that you did), we should use something like this:

60616508400000

, where the whole thing is the number of milliseconds since 1970 began, or something. If we used a signed integer we could represent every possible millisecond (or whatever resolution we want), and it would be super easy for the computer to sort.

Anyway, the whole thing about date formats is that, unless you're going to attach whatever format you use with every date you write, you'll have to use the one that everyone agrees on. No point in using the most logical format, if everyone reads it the wrong way.

[Patters]

  Chris said:

but otherwise in writing I use MM/DD/YY, because that's how you actually read a date aloud.

It's always been different for Brits, or at least ones I know: we would say "The eleventh of October two thousand and nine". Though It would be more systematically correct to use Year/Month/Date with the format that time in smaller amounts is written in Hour:Minutes:Seconds, when it is common when writing the date then the time on said date; making a scale of time where overall less relevant factors are further from the beginning.

[elmuerte]

  brkl said:

I'll just use an example to illustrate my view:

If someone comes to you and asks if you could help them move on the 19th, you're not going say "Oh, the 19th of which year and which month? I don't want to mark it on the wrong decade." No, what you're going to say is, "Uhh, sorry, I've got a prior engagement." Because moving is a bitch.

That's because you have a context (i.e. "now"). But once that context changes it can result is issues. A nice example would be the following sign in a bar: "Free Beer Tomorrow".

Relative times work well when spoken, but they don't work well when written down.

[James]

  brkl said:

The year is generally the least important, though, so it's a bit odd to have it first.

If you're going to be like that, the first digit of the year is the least relevant since it only changes once a millennium, so we should write it backwards. We have the convention of having the largest unit first in numbers, regardless of which part is most significant to our interests at any one time.

SERIOUS BUSINESS.

EDIT: I didn't see that there was another page. Oops.

  elmuerte said:

anyway... as I said earlier, I prefer using YYYY-MM-DD because it is less confusing (and it's also complete, I never use YY, always YYYY)

In writing meant for general consumption it's essential to use the whole thing with dashes to avoid ambiguity, but for my own purposes I know how I format things, so I often prefer to save a few characters.

  toblix said:

Chronological sorting of calendar dates is one obvious area where a format with decreasing precision makes sense, but usually you're still reading the whole date, right? Not only that, but if one is using the argument that it's easier for computers to sort (not saying that you did), we should use something like this:

60616508400000

, where the whole thing is the number of milliseconds since 1970 began, or something. If we used a signed integer we could represent every possible millisecond (or whatever resolution we want), and it would be super easy for the computer to sort.

I'm sure you know that POSIX time is just that, and is used in a lot of computing contexts. The advantage of the whole YYYY-MM-DD thing is that, while being more logical and simple for a machine to parse, it's also readable by a human. For a time of any real size to be meaningful to a person it has to be broken into units larger than milliseconds, so calculations would have to be done every time someone wanted to interpret a date in that format. YYYY-MM-DD is, I think, a comfortable middle ground.

  toblix said:

Anyway, the whole thing about date formats is that, unless you're going to attach whatever format you use with every date you write, you'll have to use the one that everyone agrees on. No point in using the most logical format, if everyone reads it the wrong way.

Part of what's good about YYYY-MM-DD is that it obviously isn't one of the other formats. No other format has the year at the beginning, so at worst a person will be confused and not know how to read it. That's pretty bad, granted, but there's a much lower risk of somebody misinterpreting it without even realizing the potential for confusion.

Still, I'm generally a pessimist on the subject of reform. I doubt people on the whole will organize themselves enough to make the switch, or even judge it to be particularly beneficial. Which is fine, I guess.

Edited October 11, 2009 by JamesM

[toblix]

  JamesM said:

I'm sure you know that POSIX time is just that, and is used in a lot of computing contexts. The advantage of the whole YYYY-MM-DD thing is that, while being more logical and simple for a machine to parse, it's also readable by a human. For a time of any real size to be meaningful to a person it has to be broken into units larger than milliseconds, so calculations would have to be done every time someone wanted to interpret a date in that format. YYYY-MM-DD is, I think, a comfortable middle ground.

Yeah, my point was that the debate has some assumptions that are not mentioned, human-readability being one, reading left-to-right another. Although I would also prefer if everyone in the world used Y[...]Y-MM-DD, it's because it matches the left-to-right increasing precision I'm used to with time formats, not because one format is necessarily better than the others.

  JamesM said:

Part of what's good about YYYY-MM-DD is that it obviously isn't one of the other formats. No other format has the year at the beginning, so at worst a person will be confused and not know how to read it. That's pretty bad, granted, but there's a much lower risk of somebody misinterpreting it without even realizing the potential for confusion.

Very good point.

[James]

Well clearly ideas like "better" and "worse" depend entirely on the criteria you're judging things by. If familiarity is at the top of that list, you wouldn't want to change a list. AND SO ON.

[toblix]

Exactly.

THIS WILL BE THE LAST POST

[elmuerte]

And Trine

[Patters]

  toblix said:

Exactly.

THIS WILL BE THE LAST POST

He's Kidding.

[Moelman]

I like this thread.

[MrHoatzin]

  Moelman said:

I like this thread.

Everyone here is, obviously, completely fucking mad.

[vimes]

  Kingzjester said:

Everyone here is, obviously, completely fucking mad.

Well, why, of course Alice!

[ThunderPeel2001]

This is worse than that thread featuring programming "anecdotes".

[elmuerte]

now it's ruined

[MrHoatzin]

  ThunderPeel2001 said:

This is worse than that thread featuring programming "anecdotes".

;__;

[subbes]

I exclusively use only the Mayan calendar.

Office 2003 handles the format well, but Microsoft appear to have removed lots of the Mayan calendar functionality in 2007. Presumably they feel that come 2012 there'll be no need to support it.

[twmac]

  Horticulture Tycoon said:

Damn, you guys must've been total assholes in July/August of '07.

Wasn't that the time that the forums disappeared for a while?

[GameDreamer]

Epoch time for the win.

1255285320

[Nachimir]

  ThunderPeel2001 said:

This is worse than that thread featuring programming "anecdotes".

That was an excellent thread.

[ThunderPeel2001]

  Kingzjester said:

;__;

Awww! Now I feel all guilty My apologies. I'm sure that thread was highly amusing... if you could understand it.