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ISO week date

en.wikipedia.org

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Re: ISO week date

#11

Post by mikl »

savolai wrote: post #9
mikl wrote: post #5

That is a surprising amount of complexity, really makes you glad that ISO ironed out all the details, so when I recently told our development team composed of Swiss, German, Portuguese and Danish people that we would be going live in week 4 (of 2020), everyone understood just fine. I still find it strange that some countries have not adopted week numbers. Sure, you can say something like "the week of December 21st",…

I find week numbers very cumbersome to use. Most calendars don't have them by default and most everyday interactions around dates don't involve them. As a result it's a burdensome and unroutined lookup in some arbitrary calendar somewhere just to figure out ballpark distances from current moment. I much prefer date ranges.

Depends a lot on your locale. Physical calendars around here always have them, and all decent calendar software has an option to display them.

And if you’d grown up with it, it would be a lot more natural. Much like you probably know what month you’re in without checking your watch, I have a pretty good idea what week we’re in, and if someone says they can deliver something in week 8, I instinctively know that’s late February without having to check.

So it’s a useful shorthand in many ways.

Re: ISO week date

#12

Post by mongol »

mikl wrote: post #5

That is a surprising amount of complexity, really makes you glad that ISO ironed out all the details, so when I recently told our development team composed of Swiss, German, Portuguese and Danish people that we would be going live in week 4 (of 2020), everyone understood just fine. I still find it strange that some countries have not adopted week numbers. Sure, you can say something like "the week of December 21st",…

First Thursday of January is always in week 1. That is actually the only rule needed.

Re: ISO week date

#13

Post by mikl »

mongol wrote: post #12
mikl wrote: post #5

That is a surprising amount of complexity, really makes you glad that ISO ironed out all the details, so when I recently told our development team composed of Swiss, German, Portuguese and Danish people that we would be going live in week 4 (of 2020), everyone understood just fine. I still find it strange that some countries have not adopted week numbers. Sure, you can say something like "the week of December 21st",…

First Thursday of January is always in week 1. That is actually the only rule needed.

The rule is simple, but all the work that led up to the formulation of it wasn’t :)

Re: ISO week date

#15

Post by mstade »

jeltz wrote: post #2

ISO week numbers are used a lot in some industries here in Sweden. For example education, so everyone here has encountered them at some point in their lives.

As a Swede I'd say week numbers are pretty ubiquitous in Sweden, with perhaps the first exposure to using week numbers being primary school. I remember counting down to week 9 (spring break) and, I guess, all the other breaks too.

Aside from this though, I could never quite get the hang of week numbers and always just found them more confusing than using dates. When my friends say they're going on their summer holidays in weeks 30-32 or whatever it may be, I never know what that means. Is it July? June? August even? I have no idea, and I always have to ask for dates anyway, or look at a calendar, because I can't figure it out in my head.

Re: ISO week date

#16

Post by defanor »

mikl wrote: post #5

That is a surprising amount of complexity, really makes you glad that ISO ironed out all the details, so when I recently told our development team composed of Swiss, German, Portuguese and Danish people that we would be going live in week 4 (of 2020), everyone understood just fine. I still find it strange that some countries have not adopted week numbers. Sure, you can say something like "the week of December 21st",…

> ISO ironed out all the details

Not quite: the paywalled standard itself contains bits like "dot or comma" for fractional part separators, which are then interpreted differently. Some software would use a dot (for printing and/or parsing), some would use comma, some would depend on a locale. It also allows to omit time zone (making the time unclear) and is generally quite complex, with implementations being incomplete (or having subtle differences) sometimes. Of course it's better than the zoo of formats, but RFC 3339 (ISO 8601's profile) is considerably better for interoperability, eliminating ambiguities and many options.

Re: ISO week date

#18

Post by GordonS »

thbo wrote: post #3
jeltz wrote: post #2

ISO week numbers are used a lot in some industries here in Sweden. For example education, so everyone here has encountered them at some point in their lives.

It’s the first thing I (Norwegian) turn on (or miss) in calendar implementations. Most things are based on week number here too.

I'm British, but have been working with Norwegian companies for many years, and while it took a while, week numbers now feel very natural.

For those in English locales, Outlook has an option to enable week numbers in calendar views, and mobile calendar apps have this option too (at least the ones I've used).

Re: ISO week date

#20

Post by andrepd »

betimsl wrote: post #14

All this complexity because we have to adhere to some pope from 400 years ago. It's just sad.

All this complexity with 10,000s of different languages spoken around the world too, yet here we are. Obviously there's no switch you can flip to make billions of people throughout the earth switch to a more practical calendar system (come to think of it, what is even wrong with gregorian?)
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