date formats (was Re: Single Point of Weakness is in the Works.Thank you Major Tom.)

[Sunder]

Guys, let's please change the subject from now on when we are no longer
talking about the original issues.


One marketing vp at an old little hole in the wall company used to date
things the european way on purpose, so as to look more sophisticated or
some nonsense.

Funny how that didn't save the company when the bubble burst.

I've always preferred YYYY.MM.DD, this way you can sort things very
easily.  If you write the names of the months, it doesn't translate well
to other languages, though it may be similar, *AND* more importantly from
a geek perspective, if you do a sort, April shows as the 1st month of the
year, before January - not good.  

If you do the reverse DD.MM.YYYY you can't sort it either since the 1st
day of every month shows up 1st.  Dumb.  Friendly to non-geeks, but dumb.

The worst annoyance I've seen is using Unix time as a timestamp on log
dates.  It's the most unreadable of all formats.  Sorts nicely though, but
what a bitch to read.  (Unix time being the number of seconds in decimal
since 1/1/1970.)


----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
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<--*-->:Instead of rewarding|monitor, or under your keyboard, you   \/|\/
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 + v + :should get refunds! |site, and you must change them very often.
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote:

> At 11:15 PM 4/13/03 +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
> >> Strike.  Learn to use STANDARD TIME FORMATS, you pathetic ex-con
> >> sellout journalist.  DD/MM/YYYY is an antiquated european format.
> >
> >...and MM/DD/YYYY is an antiquitated American format.
> 
> Indeed.  And ambiguous.  I always write out the month, which
> confuses americans, and telling them that its ambiguous otherwise
> just confuses them more :-)   I have settled for "I used to work
> with Europeans".