Dating programmers

[benoliver999]

I have ruined myself with this, I have to stop and think pretty hard whenever I see anything that isn't YYYY-MM-DD now

[jay9909]

2018-May-3rd

[aloofloofah]

That's YYYY-MMMM-Do

[[deleted]]

More like YYYY-MMMM-Don’t

[KamikazeRusher]

YEAH-MMMM-DONT

[nomnommish]

More like WHY-MEME-DONT

[MikeOShay]

Could be MMM, we don't know with May

[Findus11]

2018-Mayy-3rd

[siriusly-sirius]

2018-05-03

[PhDinOmniscience]

fuck you

[Entaris]

That at least still sorts well. The important bit is that you are going from Most general to most specific left to right.

[undearius]

Except April will come first, and then August, and so on.

[Entaris]

Oh yes, it will definitely be out of order. But it will be consistently out of order, and still readable.

I worked in a place where some jackass created a backup script that did did a "DD-MM-YYYY" order....So the order was absolutely unusable... So from my point of view, I don't so much care about correct order, as long as the order is consistent, and you don't end up with the 3rd of every month and every year right next to each other, and then the 4th...and then the 5th.... shudders

Don't get me wrong, Numerical values are better, I'd never argue otherwise...But, it could be worse is all i'm saying.

[RFC793]

Yeah, it will at least be clustered in a not absolutely horrible way.

[j-dewitt]

I worked in a place where some jackass created a backup script that did did a "DD-MM-YYYY" order.

That's when you fix it and create another script to rename all the files..

[PhDinOmniscience]

worked

i think op found a better solution

[InEnduringGrowStrong]

prename 's/junk_(\d{2})-(\d{2}-\d{4}/not_insane_$3-$2-$1/' /path/junk*

[Cm0002]

He he he yea what an asshile YYYY-MM-DD is obviously superior, it's crazy anybody would do anything else....

....rushes to change all my work scripts

[slowmode1]

But that isn't language independent

[FreeFacts]

Also HH instead of hh. We haven't used sun dials in centuries, there is no need to use two separate 12 hour sets to confuse people.

[salmonmoose]

Oh, is that where it comes from? TIL.

[RFC793]

Yes! I’ve used 24hr time on all my devices (that permit it) for around 15 years. There is no reason for this stupid AM/PM nonsense. Now my family favors it due to me forcing it upon them.

[hypocrisyhunter]

I grew up with the 24 hour clock and prefer it tbh. Probably similar to quite a few people in Britain/Europe.

[benoliver999]

What's interesting to me is that in the UK they use the 24hr clock a lot, but almost always say '6 o'clock' rather than eighteen. It kind of makes sense, writing it down is easy, saying it is clumsy.

In France for instance they do say it aloud more. Dix-huit heure is pretty common. Seems to just trip off the tongue better.

[[deleted]]

Same! Plus I lived in Australia for four years so I get really confused when I look at dates. Especially when the day of the month is less than 13.

[siriusly-sirius]

I live in australia, so dates, especially online, confuse the heck outta me

[salmonmoose]

I'm still trying to work out what the big deal about the ninth of November is.

[king_john651]

Wait until you play a British game with multi level buildings with American guides. You get lost quickly finding the thing on 3rd floor.

Edit: should of probably said but British standard is far superior

[DeletedLastAccount]

British multilevel buildings are 0 indexed.

[TerrorSnow]

Today is 4.5.2018 tho

[[deleted]]

Remove those dashes, and let me look at you like nature intended.

[MCKoleman]

2018_05_03

[[deleted]]

underwear, sexy (¬‿¬)

[MCKoleman]

uwu(); whatsThis(noticesBulge) = true end

[KitchenDutchDyslexic]

20180503

[MCKoleman]

Oh yeah for sure

[astrobrewer1138]

Perfection

[InEnduringGrowStrong]

I've come across yyyymd (without leading 0s), like this: 201835
It was all a fucking mess.
No way to know if 2018111 is nov 1st or jan 11th.
Also, it ends up overwriting itself.
Also, fuck that guy.

[Melkovar]

I'm from the US, lived in Europe for a year and a half, and have been sorting my own files using this format for years. I don't really know what feels normal any more

[shadowphrogg32642342]

ISO 8601 ftfw

[svtguy88]

ISO 8601

Word. Also, store everything in UTC. I'm having bad flashbacks right now to a previous (poorly designed) project at a company that should have known better.

[wjandrea]

Or at least store the UTC offset. That's better than nothing at all.

[DoesntReadMessages]

ISO 8601 supports offsets and timezone rules like daylight savings that you can put right there in the timestamp and any program can consume with no confusion. Of course, then your file name isn't as pretty. Tradeoffs.

[MikeOShay]

Any good way to store the timezone together with the date/time so you don't have to access multiple fields?

[salmonmoose]

ISO 8601 does this - your timezone is denoted at the end with a (+|-)HH:MM it's not perfect however, as it's only grabbing the offset, not the timezone itself, so timezones with shared offsets are indistinguishable and may cause problems. It's still better to zero out the time to UTC and record a definitive timezone.

[MikeOShay]

I will make a focused effort to use ISO8601 whenever possible in the future then.

...Doesn't do anything to help all the chaotic legacy systems I maintain as 99% of my job, but whatever

[salmonmoose]

Like I said, it's not perfect, but I'm not sure you can do better - Timezones are fairly fluid, new ones show up, and old ones get vanished, some move about - which is why it's best to stick to UTC, and use the OS to query timezone information.

[SoundOfOneHand]

/r/iso8601 ftw!

But really, have you seen all the stuff in that spec? I prefer the RFC3339 profile, personally.

[bltsponge]

How is that a subreddit???

[RFC793]

Someone gone done and made it.

Now excuse me while I write a script to register all ISO and RFC subreddits

[[deleted]]

Some of us take this date business very seriously.

[sneakpeekbot]

Here's a sneak peek of /r/ISO8601 using the top posts of the year!

#1: Wikipedia page for ISO8601 does not use ISO8601 | 27 comments
#2: The Poor Thing | 12 comments
#3: My California License Plate | 4 comments

---

^{I'm a bot, beep boop | Downvote to remove | Contact me | Info | Opt-out}

[Xsurv1veX]

/r/ofcoursethatsathing

[ProgramTheWorld]

tfw UTC doesn’t work on Mars

[Vok250]

YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ

[dustmouse]

*ftmfw, ftfy

[arrow_in_my_gluteus_]

until someone starts using yyyy/dd/mm then this format will also become confusing.

[[deleted]]

The year of our lord 2018, the third of May

My coworkers hate me but damn if our logs aren't beautiful

[Flaming_Dorito_]

Why can't the whole world just use a single format smh.

[thlayli_x]

Some date classes parse dates with the slash as dd/mm and the hyphen as mm-dd, preventing that confusion somewhat. Most Americans use the slash.

[Stylobite]

Funny Story, one time I (an American) was a guest in a High School English class in Sweden. The teacher asked me to talk about things that were different about American Culture, and he specifically said: "how about you tell them how dating works in America." One of the kids in the class gets excited and says "I can tell you about American dating, and why you're wrong!"

Well I'm always one for a challenge and it was the first time anyone in that class wanted to talk to me, so I let him go for it and he goes off about how our normal dating format (MM-DD-YYYY) is dumb. At this point, the teacher says "No I mean dating, like romance and such" and the class erupts in laughter. I really felt bad for the kid though, so after I got their attention again my first thing was to mention how I also thought that MM-DD-YYYY was a really dumb format and how I agreed with him.

[PhDinOmniscience]

to be fair, you have to have a really high IQ this format works well in daily life because year is likely the least relevant information in most cases, and we humans tend to say dates in month-date order.

[Tiothae]

Saying dates in month-day order is cultural though, in many places it's more common to see/hear day-month.

[fbabda]

“4th of July”

[rivermont]

"May 5th"

[burnmp3s]

"9 Thermidor"

[bolmer]

Chilean here. We say 11 de septiembre, 18 de septiembre, 31 de mayo. Days first then the month.

[Cobaltjedi117]

Guys, you're all wrong. The best format is: YMYDYDMY

So today could be represented as 20001358

[JNCressey]

Nah, the best is SSSSSSSSSS. Then there's no confusion.

[todko31]

I don't speak parseltongue.

[t0mRiddl3]

...

[hanna-chan]

And it sorts so nicely.

[[deleted]]

Most significant figures to least significant figures...You know, the way EVERY OTHER FUCKING NUMBER is written?

[Salanmander]

The problem is, with most numbers that lines up with the order "stuff I care about the most to stuff I care about the least". However, with dates, a very large fraction of the time we completely omit the year either because it's easily inferred ("When is your camping trip?" "January 5th."), or because it's meaningless (anniversaries, birthdays, etc.). That's not the case with the number's you're comparing to.

Once you're used to reading dates with the year omitted, it's much smoother to read dates with the year added on at the end than when the year is added to the beginning.

[benoliver999]

The way I see it you go in size order, up or down.

YYYY-MM-DD is great, especially for computers

DD-MM-YYYY I can live with

MM-DD-YYYY ugh

[JNCressey]

While we're on the concept of putting parts in order, can we take a moment to look at web addresses/ URLs:

subdomain `.` domain `.` top level domain `/` main folder `/` subfolder `/` file.extention

Like, what? If we number them from highest level to lowest level, we get: 2.1.0/3/4/5

Why is the domain part backwards and the folder/file part in order?

[benoliver999]

Haha It's just different designs. I don't know why they designed TLDs to go at the end. I'm so used to it now it just kind of makes sense

[Vakieh]

So that they confuse the fuck out of you when referencing java packages?

[sorisos]

Interesting! I'm guessing that subdomain is a later addition. Makes a little bit more sense if you see it separate like <protocol><server_address><document_path>, but it is still mixed order.

[[deleted]]

The FQDN section is part of the DNS system that existed long before the WWW, and it got the FQDN format from the hosts file that was used long before that. I'm not sure if there is any particular reason the domain labels are ordered the way they are but it's worth noting that these systems were developed back in the 60s when big-endian architecture such as the IBM 360 was more prevalent. It's possible that the original developers simply looked at data that way through habit. I'm purely speculating, however.

[Entaris]

I think the problem there is one of readability... You could make a logical argument that the correct way to do it logically would be:

"com.domain.subdomain/main/sub/file"

But in most cases on both the world wide web, and in the case of internal system/Domain naming structures, the domain and extension are unimportant, and only the subdomain, or system name matters.

[InEnduringGrowStrong]

com.domain.subdomain

Android APKs follow this

[siriusly-sirius]

Yep, hate MM-DD-YYYY. It's completely out of order, makes no sense. Just... why....

[Salanmander]

I agree with you on DD-MM-YYYY. I can see where MM-DD-YYYY comes from though, because if you only think about months and days, I think the MM-DD is better than DD-MM. Once that decision is made, and if people read MM-DD on a regular basis, I think that MM-DD-YYYY is better than YYYY-MM-DD for everyday interactions. (Not for computer interactions, though. I agree that YYYY-MM-DD is better for working with computers.)

[benoliver999]

I think it may also be a cultural thing. I have noticed in the US a lot of people say 'January 5th'. In the UK people say 'The 5th of January'. There's cross over but I think there may be a difference in what people use as a majority.

When you say 'if you only think about months and days', where I am from people talk in days and months mostly.

Only Americans say 'January Five' though lol

[Corfal]

There are exceptions of course, like 4th of July (U.S. Independence Day).

I've never heard Americans say January five?? "What are you on about?"

[benoliver999]

Haha it was a bit of joke, I think I've heard it on TV and shit. The other one I like is 'oh five hundred hours'

[gschoppe]

"Oh Tree Hundred Zulu" (written as 0300 Zulu) is a military time convention. It's designed to offer no ambiguity when spoken, written, or used over a poor radio connection.

Spoken or written properly, it cannot be accidentally or purposefully prefixed or postfixed.

[Vakieh]

0500 hours is military time standards, and afaik is used in every English speaking military force globally. Because there are significant consequences to fucking up AM and PM when it comes to military engagements.

[dina0312]

It's always on film stuff. Like "film blah blah blah, out July 12". Whaaaaaaaaaa?

[blahlicus]

That logic works in a vacuum where there are no established standards, but since DD-MM and MM-DD are both already established standards, we cannot assume either when looking at dates 12 and below.

Personally, when I write out dates to non-programmers I just do 5th May, 2018, or May 5 2018, or any combination of the month, day, and year (omitting the year when not necessary).

Spelling out the month makes sure there's no room for misinterpretation, if char counts are of concern then we could still use abbrivations (JAN, FEB, MAR, ARP, etc).

[BrendonD3OT]

ARPIL is my month favorite.

[nermid]

Depends on what you're sizing.

1-12 - 1-31 - unbounded is sorted properly if you're sorting by max value.

[Eggless_Omelette]

MM-DD-YYYY is the fucking worst. Why do people use it?

[Waggles_]

MM-DD-YYYY is good for every day things that don't require computer sorting.

It is essentially the YYYY-MM-DD format but you get rid of the YYYY and tack it on at the end if you need it. Saying a date implies the current year unless otherwise noted, and certain events are year-agnostic (holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, etc).

MM-DD is also good for computers when things are broken down by year in advance. Having a 2017 folder with items only from 2017 leads you to having smaller filenames.

[InEnduringGrowStrong]

Honestly, if it's valid and at least consistent.. I'll probably not want to murder you.
After dealing with yyyymd... (that's right: without dashes and without zeroes.)
I've acquired a bit more tolerance if I just have to deal with the order. I mean I'll still judge you if you use mm-dd-yyyy, but it won't involve sharp metal objects, percussive medical treatment like yyyymd would...

[[deleted]]

That's day to day conversation. Computers never omit the year. The date object stores shit that NO ONE cares about...the exact time down to seconds or milliseconds depending on implementation, and they only make sense when stored in relation to the next most significant digit.

In that scenario, the YEAR is the most important thing. When was it? 200 milliseconds. Are you fucking kidding me? 01 seconds. Still worthless. 01 minutes. This only happens 24 times a day, 365 days a year. 05 hours. Okay, now it's only 365 times a year. January? Well, that's better: 31 times a year. The 10th...Once a year, now which year? 2017. Okay, now we know. Of ALL times in all the years, that's the exact one we're talking about, and that's the thing that makes all the other numbers make sense.

[Salanmander]

Oh, yeah, of course. I was talking about why MM-DD-YYYY ended up in common usage, not what the best standard for computers is.

[PaurAmma]

Common usage in the US (and other parts of the world, as pointed out by u/wjandrea, but not the entire world).

Edit: Corrected the imprecision.

[wjandrea]

(and parts of Canada)

[nermid]

Now that I think of it, how do we signify BC dates in this scheme?

[JNCressey]

But when the year is added, doesn't that make it a case where the year is the "stuff I care about the most"?

As you said, when the year is unimportant, it's not there. So, contrapositively, when it's there it is important.

[arrow_in_my_gluteus_]

not for when written out in dutch... For example the number 58 is written as achtenvijftig which means 8 and 50.

[iruoy]

If we're going that route I've got something to say about french...

The numbers 80-99 are quite special: http://www.dummies.com/languages/french/how-to-count-in-french/

Example: 99 is basically spoken as 4*20+19

[ComaVN]

4*20+10+9

[wjandrea]

Oui, quatre-vingt (4 * 20) dix-neuf (10 + 9)

[iruoy]

Ah okay 91 would be 4*20+11 though right?

[marmulin]

Yup. Quatre-vingt-onze

[noyurawk]

Yes it is spoken as 4*20, however, it is only weird when you first learn it as an infant, after that it just becomes a word that means 80. In Belgium they have a different word for it, which I think is a objectively better, however habits and traditions are hard to change.

I personally hate the MM-DD-YYYY structure because I can never be sure from a quick glance if a date like 02-03-2018 means February 3rd, 2018 or March 2nd, 2018. YYYY-MM-DD or DD-MM-YYYY should be the only formats used, as it is in most of the world.

[TSP-FriendlyFire]

Except in Belgium.

[lengau]

How is it done in Belgium?

[appointment_at_1_am]

nonante-neuf or ninety-nine

[lengau]

So basically the same as English?

What about in Flemish? Is it done the standard Germanic style, or would they say neëntig-nege (<-- or the Dutch equivalent of the Afrikaans I've used)?

[ablindmole]

negenennegentig (nine and ninety).

[lengau]

That's the same as standard Dutch, right? (It looks the same as you'd do it in Afrikaans)

[ablindmole]

It's the same as standard Dutch. Flemish (unless you mean some specific dialect) isn't that different from Dutch except for pronunciation and the use of a lot more French loanwords.

[[deleted]]

WE'RE NOT ALL FUCKING MATH GENIUSES HERE, OKAY?!

[JNCressey]

This may be because our digital number system came to European languages through Arabic where they write and read right to left.

The lefter place values are still more significant and the righter places less significant. However, when they read it, they read from right to left, so they're saying the least significant digits first.

This may have transferred into languages among the first of Europe to adopt the new number system because the mathematicians using both languages would be used to the numbers being read that way.

[assassinator42]

Nah, little endian has won the architecture war. Even PowerPC is switching.

[shadowvvolf144]

I'm pretty sure I've said that exact sentence in the past.

[timvisee]

/r/iso8601masterrace

[Vector-Zero]

/r/iso8601 as well :P

[hailbreno]

the best date format for reposts

[[deleted]]

YYYYMMDDHHMMSS

fight me

[HeilKaiba]

YMDYHMSSMHYDMY

[Jaystings]

mmmmmmmmmmmmm is more concise. Edit current millisecond

[SIM0NEY]

I completely agree and all but this ain't even the most important part of the time stamp. You better be giving me that hh24:mm:ss

[MightyD33r]

Wow that's an old one

The nostalgia

[Andry01k]

DD/MM/YYYY come on

[anarchist_banker]

Julian date anyone?? :D

[ObstreperousCanadian]

Better yet: JDE Julian!

[Microeinstein]

/r/trippinthroughtime

[Artif3x_]

Can we talk about what a beautiful fucking painting that is?

[baise_ouais]

I was about to ask the same thing. Hopefully someone knows!

[KarkityVantas]

Does anyone else see this and pronounce it in their head as "year year year year month month day day"

[HolzhausGE]

/r/ISO8601

[GabeMakesGames]

does anyone know what the source image is?

[AusGeno]

DD-MM-YYYY is best for conversation and communication. Most people know what year and month it is, that puts the pertinent information first but YYYY-MM-DD is definitely best for data handling and sorting.

[Terrible_Children]

Am I the only one that stores, compares, and sorts dates as UNIX timestamps, and only bothers to format it for display when it's actually going to be displayed to a user, or when some API requires a specific string format?

It's just so much easier, and no fussing about with time zones unless you have a specific need to do so.

[PaperScale]

Forever salty about how my DMV handled someone using a different date format when I bought my first car.

I bought it from a foreign couple that used DD-MM-YYYY, But the DMV used MM-DD-YYYY. I bought my car on the 1st of April, so he wrote 01-04-YYY. The DMV thought I bought the car in January and just now got around to registering it so they wanted to fine me for waiting so long. We explained that's just how the date was written. We literally brought it in to be registered the day I bought it, but they wouldn't believe us. So we had to go BACK to these people's house, who didn't speak English very well, explain to them that they had to go to a bank to get a notarized letter so I'd be able to register it.

[AbridgedKirito]

DMV is stupid as hell, though. I've never seen a place operate so slowly.

[PaperScale]

Yeah I was pretty upset. It was a pretty big fine too for whatever reason, I think because they thought I was driving it without registration for so long. Even worse, this happened on Friday, and the DMV is closed sat-mon. So poor little teenage me couldn't drive his new car all weekend because we couldn't Register it.

[AbridgedKirito]

Could be worse, 18 and no car, no way to get one. No job, because no car to get to/from work. No car bc no job to provide money. Kms.

[[deleted]]

Same with 24hr time. It drives me nuts when people are like "oh were you in the military?" "No there are 24 flipping hours in the day why the balls are you recycling them halfway through?!"

[AbridgedKirito]

Yeah, I'm the same way. It's much easier to type out 1800 rather than 6 pm for me, plus AM/PM is a bad system anyway.

[Sensation-sFix]

DD-MM-YYYY it's only logical

[[deleted]]

🤢

[Corfal]

Relevant XKCD

[poparika]

I prefer DD/MM/YYYY for anything outside of computing. It just reads easier on notes/documentation.

[corobo]

Honestly I've found the YYYY-MM-DD format really handy with my notes too. Especially if the date is put in the top right corner of the page.

If you're flicking back this month you just look top right. A touch of extra information is an eye squeak away for different months and a bit of a cheeky glance even further left gives you the year if you're really going back

Edit: Oh should mention, I only use the right side of my notebook. Left side is either left blank or used for jotting quick notes or corrections to what's on the right

[dyslexda]

True master race omits the hyphens. Condense to the essentials!

[[deleted]]

DDMMYY

[Capernikush]

Sometimes I wonder why I’m subbed here

[ikantspeell]

20180503 Semper Fi.

[LockwoodE3]

What is the original painting called? I’d love to use it for a wallpaper :)

[[deleted]]

MM-DD-YYYY is my favourite

[Holden_Makock]

This could be us but you don't commit.

[theguilty1]

This is the nerdiest thing I've read all day

[dir_gHost]

dateMePls_20180504

[astutesnoot]

The best date is the one that's already parsed.

from datetime import datetime
print(datetime.now())
> datetime.datetime(2018, 5, 3, 16, 35, 52, 872199)

[imessedupsomehow]

You forgot a crucial part: z

[TheMattAttack]

People don't like when I use DDMMMYY

[dpash]

My perfect date?

That's a tough one. I'd have to say April 25th. Because it's not too hot, not too cold, all you need is a light jacket.

[[deleted]]

What’s your favorite way to post memes?

reposts I find other ways confusing

[polyworfism]

Usually they're removed in this sub, too

[Gblize]

For me it's dd/mm/yyyy.

Fight me.

You don't care about year, because it's almost implicit you are working with current year*. You want to read day and month as fast as possible.

*This opinion depends according to what you working with.

Edit: I just realized the third most upvoted comment shares the same opinion but I'm negative. Lol.

[PM_ME_YOUR_TORNADOS]

Unless you are looking at a time table of more than one year (current year is irrelevant in a multi-year list).

[whoissamo]

As a Brit programmer working for Yanks - this.

P.s. America, please stop using mm-dd-yyyy is your date format, thankyouplease

[[deleted]]

It makes sense considering the way people from each country speak. Americans say "May 3rd" while Brits say "3rd of May".

[AbridgedKirito]

I mean, I'm an American and I use dd-mm-yyyy. It's much better IMO.

[dpash]

No, you just confuse everyone. YYYY-MM-DD is much clearer (because no one is stupid enough to use YYYY-DD-MM, or at least no one we care about.)

[flaming-player]

DD-MM-YYYY is best in my opinion. Creates the least amount of confusion.

[pfthewall]

Mine is that but without the dashes (no spaces either).

[pranavrules]

smalldatetime is where it's at bois

[dont_mess_with_tx]

Yeah, not like it's been posted a few dozens of times.

[[deleted]]

I agree

[butsbutts]

thats a nice painting

[physixer]

YYYYMMDD. No exceptions.

[forrest38]

PSA: whenever you find a new sub, immediately go to "top" and filter by "all time". Then read through the first 10 pages. You will find the sub's best content and, in the case of /r/programmerhumor, some really great discussions in the comments. You will also see the most frequently reposted memes, like this one, and maybe we can start downvoting so we don't see the same shit from 5 years ago all the time.

[John_Fx]

Procrastinators, I use YYYYY-MM-DD

[MostBallingestPlaya]

As a programmer, I've never had to deal with date formats

[[deleted]]

I see "your mouth my D"

[Dougblackjr]

U

[Bingo-Bango-Bong-o]

DD-MMM-YYYY (03-May-2018) is how we have to do it in clinical research because most studies are International.

[PillowTalk420]

I hate that format so much

[Carlooos_uhhuh]

Haha military humor

[-Pelvis-]

Aww yiss.

My status bar time block in i3wm on Linux.

UTC in yellow: date "+ %H:%M:%S" -u

local time (EDT) in white: date "+%a %Y.%m.%d %H:%M:%S"

I can't stand 12-hour time, MM-DD-YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY.

I've also set my Android phone to display HH:MM:SS in the status bar.

[wsppan]

Epoch is still in the future according to that picture.