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Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

slack.engineering

71–80 of 183 posts

Re: Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

#71

Tidbit: 2-22-22 was also when Russia invaded Ukraine And Joe Bidens statement about the invasion was on 2-22-22 2:22pm on the dot. I could not figure out the significance of this more than 11:11 was when WW1 ended, but it's probably something else.

Nope, you’re off by two days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai...

Re: Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

#72
post #57
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because people for hundreds of years have been saying "March second, nineteen sixty two" which they then write out in that order. As a programmer, peoples' frustrations are understandable, but you're a bit naïve if you think even a percentage point of the speaking population of the world knows or is concerned with big endian-ness or sortability. However they speak English, at least in America, in that order, and…

> Europeans only got it a little better. There is a reasonable argument for little endian dates (as in the least significant information is usually the most relevant as it changes most often), but apart from the "it has been like this forever" I don't see any reasonable argument for middle endian date formats. Then again, the US is notoriously resistant to the metric system too.

It's because it matches the way we speak dates aloud. When intended for human consumption, sortability and big-endianness doesn't matter, but matching the way we speak does. Maybe other cultures actually speak dates differently, I don't know, but I have never seen a native English speaker habitually speak dates any differently than "January 1st, 2001".

All that said, I definitely agree with the original complaint, m-dd-yy is an atrocious format. If you're going to use dashes, stick with yyyy-mm-dd. Replacing the dashes with slashes, as in 2/22/22, would have been fine.

Re: Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

#73

That date format is actually the worst I have ever encountered. m-d-y, with year in 2 digits, numbers not zero-padded, US "order" yet using dashes. It's like a moderator of /r/ISO8601 came up with the worst possible format on purpose . Am I missing something?

> Am I missing something?

Yes, the numbers are all the same, and the author is based in the US, and thus is using the default format in the US. So odd that this is the top comment.

Re: Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

#74

That date format is actually the worst I have ever encountered. m-d-y, with year in 2 digits, numbers not zero-padded, US "order" yet using dashes. It's like a moderator of /r/ISO8601 came up with the worst possible format on purpose . Am I missing something?

Came here to complain specifically about this. 2022-02-22 is unambiguous, big endian, and sorts nicely. IDK why society still uses any other date formats considering how international everything is.

The one exception I can think of is a bug in the mssql datetime type (but not date or datetime2) where strings in that format are assumed to be yyyy-dd-mm if the locale dateformat is dmy (e.g. British English).

Re: Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of handwavy conspiracy thinking is distressingly common. What basis do you have for your suspicion? Is it just “big company bad”?

Quoted post unavailable.

> engulfs the worker inside a dead-eyed grunt culture, featuring an endless spree of work-life balance destroyers. It might be great for people who ask for things from others, but for the people who have to actually do the thing being asked of them, Slack is a nightmare world.

I think it depends on the organization and how you use it. In a previous role I would’ve agreed with you. People expected you to reply at all hours, where I am now that isn’t the case.

Tools do not create toxic culture or destroy work-life balance. Organizations do that.

Re: Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

#76
post #70
post #66

Just my personal take, I think this is a really well-written incident postmortem. It's specific, extensive, candid, and dare I say, entertaining? Many incident reports are fully lacking in any meaningful detail, or wholly unapologetic. I actually enjoyed learning tidbits about the author, in particular their mention of https://how.complexsystems.fail/ . Reading this boosted my confidence in Slack's teams, which shoul…

The fact that the current top comment thread is quibbling about the date format in the title seems to agree with this assessment, if there was anything real to complain about that’s what we’d be seeing, instead we get bikeshedding on the date format in the title of a post.

Which is aligned with US date formatting.

Re: Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

#77
post #66

Just my personal take, I think this is a really well-written incident postmortem. It's specific, extensive, candid, and dare I say, entertaining? Many incident reports are fully lacking in any meaningful detail, or wholly unapologetic. I actually enjoyed learning tidbits about the author, in particular their mention of https://how.complexsystems.fail/ . Reading this boosted my confidence in Slack's teams, which shoul…

On today’s internet, a frank post mortem delivers value to customers and PR gold too.

Re: Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

#78
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so tired of having to do that game every time I see a date. It is not hard, but it is quite annoying. Especially since it isn't solvable in a lot of cases, so you try to reason your way to the most realistic interpretation. It shouldn't be this hard.

It’s not really that hard. Like the imperial system, Americans just memorize how it works as children and don’t think about it anymore. Think about it like speaking a different language, except with numbers and not words.

[deleted]

Re: Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

#79
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europeans only got it a little better. There is a reasonable argument for little endian dates (as in the least significant information is usually the most relevant as it changes most often), but apart from the "it has been like this forever" I don't see any reasonable argument for middle endian date formats. Then again, the US is notoriously resistant to the metric system too.

It's because it matches the way we speak dates aloud. When intended for human consumption, sortability and big-endianness doesn't matter, but matching the way we speak does. Maybe other cultures actually speak dates differently, I don't know, but I have never seen a native English speaker habitually speak dates any differently than "January 1st, 2001". All that said, I definitely agree with the original complaint, m-…

“the twenty-sixth of April” would be the way I say today’s date and anecdotally is in common usage in both countries I’ve lived in (the UK and Australia, both using d/m/y). I’d say it’s about as frequent as “April the twenty-sixth” by itself, and definitely more common if you include the day (“Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of April”).

Re: Slack’s Incident on 2-22-22

#80
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europeans only got it a little better. There is a reasonable argument for little endian dates (as in the least significant information is usually the most relevant as it changes most often), but apart from the "it has been like this forever" I don't see any reasonable argument for middle endian date formats. Then again, the US is notoriously resistant to the metric system too.

It's because it matches the way we speak dates aloud. When intended for human consumption, sortability and big-endianness doesn't matter, but matching the way we speak does. Maybe other cultures actually speak dates differently, I don't know, but I have never seen a native English speaker habitually speak dates any differently than "January 1st, 2001". All that said, I definitely agree with the original complaint, m-…

In the UK I think "1st of January" is probably slightly more common than "January the 1st" although you hear both. "January 1st" (no "the") sounds American.
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