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I've grown accustomed to this format so much that I date checks and documents this way. I was at the doctor recently and had to fill out new paperwork. When I signed and dated it, the receptionist asked me to re-do the form because the date was "weird."
I had the exact same thing happen to me at a bank. I filled out my slip with yyyy-mm-dd, because it's the only way that makes fucking sense, and the teller told me to rewrite it (mm/dd/yy).
Lmao. How do you differentiate between 6 and 6 o clock then? Use yet another column to state AM or PM? How are they in management position if they cannot read a clock?
it's a good start but whoever created that shows they don't know what they're talking about. 57.39 very much is a date in excel, it's just 1900-02-26 09:21:36 (AM) not 57/39/2020.
Really any time listed online should include the referenced timezone somewhere to avoid the confusion of some sites automatically adjusting them to your local timezone and others just not
The 24 hour format is the only one that makes sense in modern computing, and even that is a compromise with tradition. Imagine if you had to deal with money in the format of 60 cents to a dollar, 60 dollars to a gold coin, and 24 gold coins to a gold brick. Even England gave up on that crap decades ago.
YYYY-MM-DD is almost objectively the best for database purposes. DD-MM-YYYY has an argument conversationally since dates being discussed tend to be near the current one. So, Day is most informative, then month, then year. Makes some sense to reference them in that order (though i still prefer YMD to DMY).
Of course, I'm dumb and from US, so I still use MM-DD-YYYY. I'm trying to reset my defaults to celsius and metric first. Baby steps.
If you treat the 32-bit value as an unsigned int, then you're good until 2106. If you use a signed 64-bit int, you are good until 292277026596. Unsigned 64-bit, I can sleep in until 584554051223. I think we're good for now!
apparently unix time is used for kernel functions and the battery charger on early versions of iOS so any iPhone before the 5s running iOS 9 or before just gets completely bricked at the 32-bit unix time overflow lol
I'm in a country that uses this format, but surrounding countries use the inverse. As a result we get a mix of both systems, most visible are the expiration dates on food.
Some producers don't write the year on dairy or meat because it obviously won't last that long, but some use the correct format of MM-DD, while others use the opposite one. Then you see "Use by 11/12" and there's no way of knowing whether the product has just expired, or if it still has a month of shelf life.
It's annoying and I should call the consumer rights office about it.
True. I’m a fullstack developer (ie backend developer with googling/copilot skills in frontend).
Dates are one of the most annoying part. We have seven languanges to maintain with the different date formats presentened on screen and reports. It’s a mess. Why can’t we agree on one format. We are also a bank so we have to handle amounts formats.
I mean, we did, ISO 8601 is an international standard date format. It's just that a bunch of people don't use it for no real reason other than that it's not the first thing they learned.
We don’t really have consistency with anything, we measure in both cm and inches depending on what it is. We are a really flexible people.
We also use both Fahrenheit and Celsius. For height we use feet and inches, if it’s government related the only thing that makes sense is strictly cm.
I think this may come from the French side of Canada, in French everything has a gender and their is really no consistency in that gender, there are general rules, but they are not always followed.
Organizing by YYYY/MM/DD makes most sense if you’re looking for a specific item in a large data set. Filter by year, then month, then day. Move from least granular to most granular.
So much this. People can say the date verbally any way they want, but for document filing and data organization purposes, year month day is objectively the best
As a computer would read a date, YYYY-MM-DD would categorize things chronologically. Makes sense. As people would read a date, DD-MM-YYYY would read from most relevant date to the least (the year). Makes sense. My only credit to the American system is how people say dates... You can say, "the 5th of November, 2026", but I'd hazard to guess a lot of people say, "November 5th". That, I think, is where the US interpretation comes from.
Right? Like in my language, todays date would be said "Fjortonde November" or "14e November". You can't reverse this order. Or if we're just using numbers, we say it like "Fjortonde i elfte" (Fourteenth in the eleventh)
And we say "November 14th" (and write it that way). I guess that does make some sense- I didn't think it did at all until that comment up there. It's written how we say it.
The US interpretation comes from context. When there's an event going on, the fastest way to narrow down context is by the month. You're taking a 365 day range and narrowing it down to a max of 31 days. If you were to give the day first, you wouldn't narrow anything down, because for the most part you'd have that same day in any month of the year, so the date range wouldn't change much if at all. Obviously the difference is minute because month and day are usually included together, but it's still a difference.
As an American, that's how I always looked at it. I only say "the X of Y" in rare cases like "5th of November" and "4th of July." The vast majority of the time, I'm saying something like "June 3rd," so it just makes sense to write it that way.
Another interesting thing is that we don't even do important dates like "4th of July" consistently, as we say both "9/11" and "Jan 6" for example.
so many people are uninformed that America got their dating system from England when they used to do it the same exact way but then changed because the rest of the world started doing it differently and America just kept doing it the same way
V for Vendetta led to Guy Fawkes being pretty well known in the US. The mask was adopted as the symbol for the hacker group Anonymous in 2008 and showed up at a lot of protests around that time.
In terms of organizing folders and filez and shit then def, but in the day to day you already know what month and year it is so it's more "mentally efficient" to put the DD first
It's funny how the YYYYMMDD format just evolves independently once you get into that space. No one told me to name my files like that in grad school, I started doing it on my own when I had hundreds+ of microscope images from a single session and sorting them became a headache because I needed a way to keep them grouped and in order.
It's just written the way it's coloquially said in the u.s. generally. "November 14th, 2026".
Alternatively, "The 14th of November, 2026." It's faster to say it the other way, and a lot of systems in the u.s. follow layman's convention just from the nature of it's founding. A cup, a foot, etc. I get the u.s. is bad and stupid and the audience clapped, but it's getting silly. New jokes please.
I would just throw in the positive - it's about framing.
How long of a time scale do we generally operate at? How long do you plan for or look back upon?
Daily? What are you a rat?
Yearly? My god things are so slow and uninteresting thats the metric?
Monthly makes sense because it also ties into the seasons
Also, the month gives the most useful information out of the three, gets you the general time of the year, what season it is, and what the general weather might look like, and in a lot of contexts, the year is the least relevant. The format makes complete sense when you don’t force yourself to be an idiot to not understand it
Fr😭😭 it does not matter. They all end up meaning the same thing anyway. 😭 Who tf cares....just write it the way you are asked to write it. Its not that deep. Im an American i do not care which way we write the date...🥀
I propose a new format in which the day, month, and year are bit-striped across a single unsigned 16-bit integer. Rather than arbitrarily favouring one component of the date, we interleave their individual bits:
Day: 5 bits
Month: 4 bits
Year: 7 bits
Thus November 14, 2026 becomes 0001 1111 0011 1010 or 0x1F3A for short.
In the United States, in response to someone asking the date, we say "November 14th, 2026". So to me that's why we format it that way. Probably also general order of importance.
This is part of why we format it that way. It’s mostly formatted that way because that’s how the British used to format it way back when the colonies were formed.
The UK changed their style and the US just kept it going.
Year first. When I date files on my computer, I start with the year: 26-11-14_filename. Then, everything is automatically sorted by date when I click sort by name.
I run a small business. This let's me keep my receipts and other paperwork in chronological order, even if I enter them in randomly, out of order.
Edit: okay, I switched to 4 digit years. Relax everyone.
I’m an Australian, also go Day/Month when saying dates. Since moving to the US I’ve shifted to saying Month/Day on purpose because I imagine it’s easier for folk to parse when they’re writing things down or reading things like with appointments and such.
As someone who always has yearly calendar on my wall, I prefer MM/DD/YYYY.
Also, when you start with the month, you instantly get a general timeframe of when something is within the year. Is it this month? Is it next month? Near the holidays? Then get specific with the date. The year is usually no issue, so in the back.
As an accountant the YYYYMMDD format is also alphabetically categorised, allows you to sort invoices both by when they were raised,for what and is infinitely superior.
Edit* one of the reasons I hear in favor of the mmddyy format is how dates are spoken in American English. People commonly say "today is November 14, 2026" so the format follows that order. I don't commonly hear people say "today is the 14th of November 2026".
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u/scixlovesu 9h ago
When I was in the Navy, all our documents used the format YYYYMMDD: so today would be 20261114. It made sorting by date easier.
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u/hellodmo2 13h ago
Every programmer everywhere:
YYYY-MM-DD
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u/Tomytom99 12h ago
Fuck it, DD/YYYY/MM, embrace chaos
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u/Specialist-Neat4254 12h ago
I like Canada, we use all three depending on what we feel like doing.
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u/yota-code 13h ago
The asian way yyyy.mm.dd is self sorting which is nice
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u/travisjudegrant 10h ago edited 9h ago
Organizing by YYYY/MM/DD makes most sense if you’re looking for a specific item in a large data set. Filter by year, then month, then day. Move from least granular to most granular.
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u/MrSlime13 13h ago
As a computer would read a date, YYYY-MM-DD would categorize things chronologically. Makes sense. As people would read a date, DD-MM-YYYY would read from most relevant date to the least (the year). Makes sense. My only credit to the American system is how people say dates... You can say, "the 5th of November, 2026", but I'd hazard to guess a lot of people say, "November 5th". That, I think, is where the US interpretation comes from.
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u/They-Call-Me-Taylor 12h ago
I find YYYYMMDD to be more logical. If I was searching for a date, I’d first look for the year, then month, then the day.
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u/vIRL_Warlock 13h ago edited 12h ago
It's just written the way it's coloquially said in the u.s. generally. "November 14th, 2026".
Alternatively, "The 14th of November, 2026." It's faster to say it the other way, and a lot of systems in the u.s. follow layman's convention just from the nature of it's founding. A cup, a foot, etc. I get the u.s. is bad and stupid and the audience clapped, but it's getting silly. New jokes please.
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u/Afrojones66 13h ago
Arguing about this shit is why the aliens don’t visit us. 😔
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u/WolfBST 13h ago
I prefer DD/MM/YYYY over MM/DD/YYYY but nothing will ever come close to the perfection that is YYYY/MM/DD
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u/stoutlys 13h ago
For sorting files chronologically. Year month day is the only way to go.
2026.11.14 - Dat Azz.mp3
2026.11.15 - Dat Azz.mp3
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u/No_Atmosphere8146 13h ago
Let's just fucking start again from 1. No months, no years, no weeks. It's just 1 today.
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u/_Weyland_ 13h ago
YYYY-MM-DD is now ingrained into my brain after working as a data engineer
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u/MarzipanSea2811 13h ago
I propose a new format in which the day, month, and year are bit-striped across a single unsigned 16-bit integer. Rather than arbitrarily favouring one component of the date, we interleave their individual bits:
Thus November 14, 2026 becomes 0001 1111 0011 1010 or 0x1F3A for short.
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u/Steve_3vets 13h ago
"china japan korea iran"
and the ISO standard and all computers but whos counting
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u/Round_Ad8947 13h ago
I’m just a nerd. Year month day is sortable.
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u/Final-Carpenter-1591 13h ago
I work with the FAA. We write DD MMM YYYY. That way their is no way to mis interpret. Eg. 24NOV2026.
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u/Birklas 13h ago
ISO 8601 YYYYMMDD is the wag. Anything else is wrong.
You always check last digit to track changes. Be it days or seconds.
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u/tanman4444 13h ago
Reddit will complain about ANYTHING
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u/Adventure-Style 10h ago
Having been in the military, it should be: 13NOV26
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u/Sunbro_Kev 13h ago
In the United States, in response to someone asking the date, we say "November 14th, 2026". So to me that's why we format it that way. Probably also general order of importance.
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u/Newportonehunnid 13h ago
This what we arguing about today?🤣
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u/disposableh2 13h ago
From a filling and sorting perspective(and databases), yy/mm/dd is ideal. Put it in a spreadsheet and it's easy to sort or eyeball inconsistencies
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u/Kage9866 13h ago
It's because we write it as we say it. We say December 8th, 2026. Nobody says it's 2026, December, the 8th.
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u/PsychoWyrm 12h ago
The preference is likely tied to how you speak the date out loud. Its the difference between saying "November 13th" versus "the 13th of November".
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u/Ok-Problem4403 13h ago edited 12h ago
Year first. When I date files on my computer, I start with the year: 26-11-14_filename. Then, everything is automatically sorted by date when I click sort by name. I run a small business. This let's me keep my receipts and other paperwork in chronological order, even if I enter them in randomly, out of order.
Edit: okay, I switched to 4 digit years. Relax everyone.
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u/cygnus311 13h ago
Clearly the most important thing about a numerical date format is whether or not it can be visually expressed as a triangle.
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u/rickityBoat 8h ago
The best one for sorting is Y > M > D
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u/Saint_Exmin 10h ago
The American method is most likely related to how the date is actually spoken over here.
We say 'Today is November the 14th, 2026.", so it's written 11/14/2026.
Why is this confusing?
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u/Saito_SinOfKind 12h ago
What about;
DY/MY/DMY?
Example;
13th November 2026/ 13/11/2026 ❌
12/10/3126 ✅
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u/Htimsxnhoj 13h ago
As someone who always has yearly calendar on my wall, I prefer MM/DD/YYYY.
Also, when you start with the month, you instantly get a general timeframe of when something is within the year. Is it this month? Is it next month? Near the holidays? Then get specific with the date. The year is usually no issue, so in the back.
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u/AcesInThePalm 12h ago
YYYY/MM/DD is best for databasing where everything needs to be chronological
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u/hornetjockey 12h ago
ISO format makes the most sense, YYYY-MM-DD, because dates can be sorted numerically.
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u/NikkerFebu25 10h ago
As an accountant the YYYYMMDD format is also alphabetically categorised, allows you to sort invoices both by when they were raised,for what and is infinitely superior.
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u/AmazingLeek69 13h ago
This is the one where I’m like “just do what makes most sense to you”. I can’t bring myself to be bothered about this one.
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u/kanekikennen 13h ago
Y-M-D makes even more sense than the one we use but M-D-Y is pure cancer
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u/bebok77 13h ago
Computer wise yyyy/mm/dd is the only making sense and allowing sorting in the file editor or when scanning files in batch.
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u/Ok-Astronaut2976 13h ago
They’re all equally fine.
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u/lincruste 13h ago
As a DD-MM-YYYY user since I was born, I'd happily switch to japan YYYY-MM-DD if it made this stupid MM-DD-YYYY nonsense disappear.
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u/weberm70 12h ago
They’re arbitrary conventions, they all “make sense”. Amazing how dumb the internet can be.
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u/Backpack78 13h ago
DDMMMYYYY
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u/SorryManNo 13h ago edited 13h ago
ddMMMyyyy
14NOV2026
Edit* one of the reasons I hear in favor of the mmddyy format is how dates are spoken in American English. People commonly say "today is November 14, 2026" so the format follows that order. I don't commonly hear people say "today is the 14th of November 2026".
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u/GreenGoblinNX 11h ago
For electronic filing systems: YYYY-MM-DD is the ONLY option that makes sense.
For writing it out, I prefer DD month YYYY, as in 14 Nov 2026. It removes all ambiguity.
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u/redjellonian 7h ago
Ddmmmyy is superior, DDMMMYYYY is peak.
14Nov26