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Freedom Clock

domsson.github.io

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Re: Freedom Clock

#81
post #38
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that big-endian dates are the best solution (if nothing else, because lexical sort puts it in the right order), I think little-endian at least makes sense. The middle-endian format is just absurd.

> lexical sort puts it in the right order For a few thousand more years, sure!

Ah, the dreaded y10k problem. We really should start planning for that.

Re: Freedom Clock

#82
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only is human-firendly if you grew up with it, so it's rather "American-friendly". > You don't say "25th Apartment", you say "Apartment 25", We say 25th March in German. Saying the whole date follows the importance: day, month, year: fünfundzwanzigster märz zweitausenddreiundzwanzig.

Also the standard in French. Day (optional ordinal) Month.

Same in Polish.

Re: Freedom Clock

#83
post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

If someone at work asks me the date or if I’m signing in somewhere as a visitor and I ask the date, the response is the same: “the 25th”. The month is expected to be somewhat obvious. The year even more so.

If I’m giving or getting a response with the month I expect “25th of March”.

If I ask for the time and it’s the evening I expect someone to say “3:30” without the PM. It’s expected that I know it’s PM. In continental Europe I would expect “15 hours 30”.

Going to your address analogy, don’t you typically give the building number first? “1220 Something Street”. Again, with numbered streets in North America they tend to write and say “122nd Street” or “5th Avenue”. It’s the number that comes first. Not “Street 122” or “Avenue 5” or “Something Street 1220”. I don’t think your analogy holds well.

Re: Freedom Clock

#85
post #58
post #42

One thing I've come to learn is that American formats are human-friendly rather than machine-friendly. Our date system is like the Fahrenheit system; it works well when thinking like a human. in Fahrenheit, you just think of it in terms of 50 being the middle, "not cold and not hot". Then you understand 80 is high warm, closing in on hot, etc. Similarly for our date system, we lead with names and important informatio…

water freezes at 0, boils at 100. this is an excellent and intuitive scale for a human that is 70% water. The SI units, like kg or m are characteristic of the human scale. and more importantly, sanely decimal. and you say 3rd street, not Street 3. and 4th of july i do prefer the american decimal point 1,000.00 , it makes more sense. But it's time for humans to quit our nonsense and give way to machines , which requir…

> water freezes at 0, boils at 100. this is an excellent and intuitive scale for a human that is 70% water.

This is a stretch. How is being 70% water relevant? It’s not like I’m routinely measuring the water in my body to make sure I don’t let it boil or freeze.

Re: Freedom Clock

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty silly when people complain about different tastes in subjective areas, such as music, architecture, pronunciation, food or other cultural differences. However, when it comes to methods of technical communication such as time formats or measurement units the complaints have little to do with subjective preferences, and more to do with real world consequences of maintaining unintuitive systems. Technical la…

It's okay if there are differences. Arab-speaking countries use RTL, which causes huge issues everywhere. We don't tell them to change their language, we just adapt to it. Software developers are not using M/D/Y anyway, and everyone else who deals with international business should already understand the difference. When I see a non-American date, I assume D/M/Y. It shouldn't be that hard to expect supposedly cosmopo…

> Software developers are not using M/D/Y anyway, and everyone else who deals with international business should already understand the difference

That's a pretty major assumption that does not jive with experience. Date formatting inconsistentices were the bane of my existence in my last role. Maintaining clean databases that has input streams that came from Canada, the US and Poland constantly caused problems. Yes the company had standards of how to properly do things. Were those standards followed? Not all the time. Especially when data sources came from 2nd and 3rd tier downstream suppliers. Did people try their best? Yeah, for the most part. But that doesn't prevent mistakes.

Re: Freedom Clock

#87
post #37

To play devil's advocate, the American format aligns with how (American's at least) speak the date "March 24th, 2022".

"4th [of] July, 2023" and "July [the] 4th, 2023" are both valid - I'd bet there's a correlation between spoken order and written order, but not sure which caused which (or maybe mutually reinforcing).

Re: Freedom Clock

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't think so. If it's 0°C outside, I know it's probably time to put winter tires on because the water in the puddles will freeze. If water in the pot on my stove is close to 100°C, I know it will boil soon. Same with dates — it has nothing to do with being machine readable or not, dates should go from largest to smallest (yyyy-mm-dd, etc) or vise versa, not turn 180 degrees at midpoint for some reason. Your…

> you're drawing the bullseye afterwards if remember my idioms correctly. That's informally known as the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy

So is the few examples from the OP...
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