this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Tbh I don't really get why people get upset about mm/dd/yyyy vs dd/mm/yyyy. Is it a little weird? Sure, but personally, saying "July 4th, 1776" feels as natural as "the 4th of July, 1776". The former is more formal, the latter is more casual.
People don't get upset about saying the date in whatever format. They get upset when you write it in that format without specifying, so that you don't know if 07/04/1776 is July 4th or April 7th.
I love it when someone sends me a message like this:
????
You'll just have to compromise.
One word: Ambiguity. We need to either have a standard and stick to it, or a small handful of standards that cannot be confused for each other. DD/MM/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY can be confused for each other, so the nonsensical MM/DD/YYYY should move over and make room for DD/MM/YYYY, or we should drop both and just use YYYY-MM-DD.
ISO 8601 ALL DAY EVERY DAY BABY
While it's fine now, it used to be pretty disgusting too
Fooking disgusteen
Or DD-MMM-YYYY. Like 05/OCT/2005, which is my favorite if I don't need it to be entirely numerical.
That's fine because it's unambiguous. If I'm using another standard and you're using that, I can correct it without having to think about it.
ISO 8601. 1776-07-04. Everyone else is a heathen.
Because when usually dates formatted on number follow a descending or ascending order. Year -> Month -> Day or Day -> Month -> Year.
mm/dd/yyyy is:
-- Month <- Day | Year <-
It's not only strange but is also not easy to parse and can be confused with dd/mm/yyyy
Different languages. In German you never say "Juli der 4." it's always "der 4. Juli". (I am sure someone will proof me wrong by digging up some weird old text, but it's still never used in day to day conversation)
I assume it's similar for other languages as well.
So when you need to guess what 10-04-2024 means, it matters a lot