this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
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[–] flambonkscious 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's quirky - how is there anything logical about the military time format?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The 3 "M"s are not numerical, but indicate characters. For example 01 Jan 2023.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Considering how there's almost no computers anymore with such limited resources that they can't store a string or convert to one, it's kind of crazy anybody bothers with the ambiguity of using numbers for the month.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The limited resource is not Compute Power, but Engineer time. Sure, you could ask someone to implement wrappers everywhere in the system so that the display is human-readable - or you could put one label somewhere clarifying the date format to readers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Implement wrappers everywhere? Why can't they just write a single function that takes an ISO date a spits out a string (human readable) date? I'd put money down that such a function already exists in almost every library that deals with dates.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's why I said "implement" and not just "write". The process of wiring in that existing function has non-negligible cost, as does keeping it updated/patched.

Sure, it should be pretty small - but it's non-zero. Is it worth it? That's a product decision.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hmm good point actually

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes spreadsheet apps like excel do this. If I remember correctly MMMM would write the full month. January.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

i just write mmmmmmm because you can never have too many m's.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's written like 07 Aug 2013. It's consistent in character length, doesn't confuse internationals, doesn't take much space and is written exactly like being said around here. It's just not that great for file names.

[–] flambonkscious 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, ok. Expanding the month to 3 chars does reduce potential confusion

I feel the need to be pedantic and point out that this is only necessary, however because of the ridiculous degenerate convention of MM DD YY(YY?) used by said country...