this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's by smallest integer to largest, what's weird about that?

12 months a year, up to 31 days a month and X number of years. It makes the most sense

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Because it gets horribly fucky when you now have to figure out if a date is actually formatted as MM-DD-YY or DD-MM-YY.

Surely we've all handled reading an expiration date before and have wondered if we're eating something OK or has expired months ago because they chose the other format.

(Honestly, I think both formats are shit, and the only correct way to do dates with numbers only is YYYY-MM-DD. If not, then at least use letters for months, like 30 AUG 2023)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It should be ordered by significance (ideally descending). USA's date is like putting the million between the thousands and the unit.

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

Surely we’ve all handled reading an expiration date before and have wondered if we’re eating something OK or has expired months ago

No, I haven't, and I don't know anyone else who has

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

Then you've never bought imported food or never got food gifts overseas. Or never travelled to a country that used the format that you don't use.

For example, 06/09/2023 could mean either you're eating something that expires next month, or expired two months ago.

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

Try to figure out a way to sort it automatically and get back to me on why it's stupid

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

Easy. Don't store dates as a text string. That's just bad programming.

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

When you say "don't store dates as a string" what you're really saying is "wait for someone else to solve the problem and release a library, then use that library". That seems to be what the majority of the industry does (I'm a Java coder myself and joda is a lifesaver in that regard) but my point is that this problem is hard. Date and time stamps are a subtly difficult part of the average API monkey's daily work.