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ISO 8601: a better date format

kirby.kevinson.org

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Re: ISO 8601: a better date format

#81

Post by gherkinnn »

globular-toast wrote: post #41
m_eiman wrote: post #29

While on the subject of time, could you Americans pretty please stop believing that the week starts on Sunday? It's just as wrong as your date format.

Any choice is arbitrary. What is a week to the solar system? The only things that are real are days and years.

What is a day in the solar system? What is anything anywhere anyway?

That’s not the point.

The point is that in the US people typically work Mon-Fri and loaf around Sat-Sun (weekend) and yet the week starts in Sundays.

It’s infuriating.

Re: ISO 8601: a better date format

#82

Post by CyberRabbi »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #79
CyberRabbi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should also start speaking Chinese since it may not be a bad idea to use something a large number of people will easily understand. Edit: this is not sarcasm. It’s simple logic, unless there is something wrong with learning other languages.

Lots of people learn English because a large number of people speak it. Why should it not apply to Chinese or other often-used languages?

Thats exactly the point I’m making in my post. Glad you agree

Re: ISO 8601: a better date format

#83

Post by CyberRabbi »

jpetso wrote: post #74
CyberRabbi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should also start speaking Chinese since it may not be a bad idea to use something a large number of people will easily understand. Edit: this is not sarcasm. It’s simple logic, unless there is something wrong with learning other languages.

Being able to speak popular languages is in fact often advantageous for the multi-linguist.

Very good and very true point. Multi-linguism only has upsides.

Re: ISO 8601: a better date format

#84

Post by lovelyviking »

I invented for myself this one: 2021-02-26_08-30-00_

And never looked back. Because since then I have no problems with dates anymore.

If there is a need for 'ms' you can add them in the end or add more sections for more precision.

For me it solves it.

Re: ISO 8601: a better date format

#85

Post by systemvoltage »

bambax wrote: post #76
systemvoltage wrote: post #28

No one here is talking about practicality for non-software engineers which is probably 99.9% of the population. It might be fine for sorting and no one gives a shit about endianess. Common person would argue - why do they need to know the year first? Most people encounter dates in the same year, they already know we're in 2021 and it is not as important. Having to laboriously parse YYYY before getting to the most imp…

> laboriously parse YYYY Really? It's hard to parse the year?? What about when you come across a piece of paper written some time ago, is it not useful to know the year? > most people convey to others that this box is 12x8x8 inches "Most people" == nobody outside of the US. > And no one uses decimeter (10 cm) for some reason which is actually nice since its the size of the index finger I just measured my index finger…

> most people convey to others that this box is 12x8x8 inches

Replace inches with cm, I didn't explain it well. Even if it is centimeter, people would tell dimensions to others more than convert them. The point was about frequency of communication between humans vs. frequency of converting units.

You seem to be taking offense that I said something US-centric. I didn't mean that at all.

Re: ISO 8601: a better date format

#86

Post by FooBarWidget »

yokaze wrote: post #48
m_eiman wrote: post #29

While on the subject of time, could you Americans pretty please stop believing that the week starts on Sunday? It's just as wrong as your date format.

China and Japan have Sunday as the first day since the 4th and 8th century respectively: http://chartsbin.com/view/41671 . So presumably, you come from a Europe-centric view: http://chartsbin.com/view/41671

China does? I'm Chinese and I'm pretty sure Chinese consider Monday to be the start.

Re: ISO 8601: a better date format

#87

Post by valenterry »

ISO 8601 contains durations and time intervals which are totally undervalued! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Time_intervals)

E.g.: 2021-05-01T12:00:00Z/P2H

They are so convenient. Ever stored a tuple of two datetimes to model a time interval? E.g. a meeting that takes place on 2021-05-01T12:00:00Z and takes two hours?

Don't! Instead, store it as an interval: "2021-05-01T12:00:00Z/P2H"

Or are you creating an API where a duration or a time interval is expected? E.g. "give me all sales in this time period..."

Using time intervals for that makes it so much more easy for people to code against it and execute manual queries.

For JVM developers, there is a library out there that has amazing support: https://github.com/MenoData/Time4J

For python developers, there is pendulum which supports most of the functionality.

Re: ISO 8601: a better date format

#88

Post by progval »

systemvoltage wrote: post #28

No one here is talking about practicality for non-software engineers which is probably 99.9% of the population. It might be fine for sorting and no one gives a shit about endianess. Common person would argue - why do they need to know the year first? Most people encounter dates in the same year, they already know we're in 2021 and it is not as important. Having to laboriously parse YYYY before getting to the most imp…

It's not just about years, and it's already explained in the article. When I see the date "02/03" or "02/03/2021", I can't tell if it means "March the 2nd" or "February the 3rd", because websites and software don't consistently detect (or even care) about my locale.

But if the software show 2021-03-02, I unambiguously know which it is.

Re: ISO 8601: a better date format

#89

Post by dataflow »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #64
monsieurbanana wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh... I never remember the names of the logical fallacies, I have to look up them, thanks a lot. Anyways, here's yours: Slippery Slope.

Where’s the logical fallacy? More people natively speak Chinese than any other language in the world. If you want to maximize the exposure of your ideas, it’s only logical to render them in Chinese. It’s the same reason I prefer to distribute applications over the web. FYI: English has ~1100 million total speakers but only 318 millon native speakers, while Chinese has 918 million native speakers. https://www.visualca…

https://www.statista.com/statistics/266808/the-most-spoken-l...

Unless it's already out of date...

Re: ISO 8601: a better date format

#90

Post by systemvoltage »

bhaak wrote: post #71
systemvoltage wrote: post #28

No one here is talking about practicality for non-software engineers which is probably 99.9% of the population. It might be fine for sorting and no one gives a shit about endianess. Common person would argue - why do they need to know the year first? Most people encounter dates in the same year, they already know we're in 2021 and it is not as important. Having to laboriously parse YYYY before getting to the most imp…

> I hate writing ISO 8601 dates, even though I know it is logical. Nobody forces you to write ISO 8601 dates but if you want your dates to be easily parseable by humans, why would you write them all in numbers? 3 Nov 2020, 3rd November 2020, Nov 3rd 2020, even something like 2020 Nov 3 is uniquely parseable by humans. Even if the human doesn't know the language of the month, they can still find out what date it is fr…

Not sure, I grew up in two countries, one metric and one english units. I still prefer inches and feet to describe length. I would like decimeter but no one uses it.
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