[technobabbler]

You have to learn other cultures' norms if you want to live or work with them. It goes both ways.

Europe and America do not only time differently, but phone numbers (1-800-123-1234 in the USA, 06 86 57 90 14 in France), dates (Jan 1 1911 would be 1/1/11 in the USA, 11-1-1 elsewhere), decimals (1,000.00 or 1.000,00), units (inches vs centimeters), reading order, daylight savings time, time zones (some countries don't even have them), etc. To say nothing of language and cultural differences, just formatting basic facts.

You don't solve it "universally", you make affordances for diversity the same way you allow for light/dark mode or language or any other user preference.

Not even all calendars have proper embedded time zone information so that's not always reliable either.

There is Unix time but you still have to convert that according to arbitrary rules, especially for countries that observe variable daylight savings like the US.

It gets even harder when you have to do math, like 00:00 Jan 1 1970 plus 30 years isn't automatically midnight of Jan 1 2000. It depends on whether you mean 30 * 365 24-hour days or some # of quartz vibrations or 30 * orbits around the sun or 30 * years of a certain country's time (adjusted for leap years and leap seconds and daylight savings and time zone changes mandated by new laws). There is no "right" answer. Libraries like Luxon or Momoent can help, but it's never easy.

That's just the reality of a multicultural business world. When in doubt, double check and reconfirm.

[mrsuprawsm]

>You have to learn other cultures' norms if you want to live or work with them. It goes both ways.

This is a ludicrous and typically American-centric assertion. It is Americans who steadfastly refuse to use international norms, whilst asserting that their antiquated systems are "better".

The vast majority of the world writes dates either YYYY-MM-DD, or DD-MM-YYYY. Only America uses the (nonsensical) MM-DD-YYY system.

The vast majority of the world uses the metric system for all measurements. Britain only partially uses the Imperial system. Only America (and partially Canada) use the US customary system (which is different from the Imperial system.

The vast majority of the world measures temperatures in Celcius. Again, only America (and to a small extent Canada and old people in Britain) chooses to use Fahrenheit.

[pxue]

Wait until you hear what we do in Canada.

We got European/UK roots but since US is next door, in real Canadian fashion we just simple do both. Arbitrarily.

- driving distance and speed is measured in KM and KM/h

- but height, home construction and day to day distance we use imperial. So I'm 5'9" not 175cm. and McDonald's is 100 feet from the intercection, but the next offramp (speedway) is in 3km

- food is all in imperial, so grocery is in pounds, we buy a 12.7oz pint. But liquor stores/bottles are in ML. but if your talk to friends about what to bring to a party, it's back to pint or a "Mickey" or "26er"

- science is all taught in metric.

- But unless you talk cars and motor output, it's back to horsepower (this one is actually pretty common still everywhere in the world).

- And we use centigrade instead of farenheit. So small talk with Americans at work is a constant math excercise.

- Dates are complete utter toss up in the air. My driver license is YYYY/MM/DD, but i know for a fact I've filled out forms that goes MM/DD/YYYY (at the doctors office), and i'm just conditioned to go MM/DD/YYYY when typing dates online because that's how I say it. I don't say 25th of March, I say March 25, 2022.

[immnn]

I am so sorry for this off-topic comment, but I really need to thank you for showing me - an European - why Trey Parker and Matt Stone created Terrance and Phillip xD

[reph2097]

Das ^^

[technobabbler]

Eh, I only said that because I didn't grow up in the US, and had to learn American ways to live and work here. America's a huge part of the world economy and international business, so you're probably going to run into one at some point (sorry, Earth).

But the US isn't the only place with different practices.

China has no time zones. New Zealand's Chatham Island has a 45 min time zone, as in UTC+12:45. Some institutions use lunar or cultural calendars instead of Gregorian time. Some don't use Arabic numerals outside of Western collaboration.

Time aside, the US, Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Philippines, and a few other places use letter-sized instead of A4 paper. Phone number formats are different everywhere. The time and decimal separators are different in many places. Time and timeliness (as in how important it is to start and end on time) differs by culture. Preference for information density vs simplifying cognitive load (in the UX sense) differs between languages and cultures. Red is a warning in some cultures and good luck in others. Not all colors are even distinguishable between cultures. Do you act casual, or formal? Keep your distance or offer a touch? Right hand, left hand? Is pointing OK? How long should you maintain eye contact? First names, last names? Many cultural systems don't identify people like that. Nodding isn't a universal gesture. Do you do a haka before events? What about a ritual blessing before a competition? There are SO many differences to consider in an international context.

Big companies have entire departments working on this stuff, not because they are ludicrously US-centric, but because it's so different everywhere.

I only mentioned the US vs Europe differences because that's what the OP asked for. Shrug. I'm not shilling for the American ways, just describing them. I wish we went metric decades ago, because it's a far superior system.

But the thing about standards: everyone has their own.

[emerged]

So if an American moved to Japan and was suggested to learn basic Japanese, it would be ludicrous and typically Japan-centric? They have a few customs as well, are those all ludicrous and typically Japan-focused?

[chucksta]

It may be ludicrous but at least it's tolerant.

Many Americans would use standard _given the opportunity_. Nothing here was ever converted, or has the same availability in metric so things continue on as they always have. Very few defend them as better, especially distance measurements.

Claiming there is a "better" system for dates is just preference. Why does it make sense to list the year first, it only changes once every 365 days?

[DonaldFisk]

> The vast majority of the world uses the metric system for all measurements.

Except for times and angles (only the second and the radian are SI). Also, aviators everywhere outside of PRC and North Korea use feet and flight levels (hundreds of feet) for altitude, and navigators (in the air and at sea) use nautical miles and knots. Other widely used non-metric units include mmHg for pressure, AU and parsec for astronomical distances, and eV for energy.

[signal11]

> Only America (and partially Canada) use the US customary system (which is different from the Imperial system.

The US armed forces use metric, right?

[basch]

>Only America uses the (nonsensical) MM-DD-YYYY system.

It makes more sense as MMDD-YYYY or (MM-DD)-YYYY. The Month-Day is a single thing, there are 365 of them in a year, in a roughly base 30 counting system. The year can often be left off when colloquially referring to a date (3/14 or 0314 for example.)

[gls2ro]

Just trying to reason here:

I think it makes more sense to have DD/MM as the day is the thing that changes more often and thus DDMM starts with the most important information first.

Also if I think I never encountered someone looking at their digital watch to know what Month is. But always people check phones/watches to know what day is. So why would these systems start with the less important information for the user?

[basch]

Do you put minutes before hours when you tell time?

Day before month creates some ambiguity regarding if you’re talking about the near past or near future.

If you consider MMDD a single unit, it doesn’t make sense to represent it backwards. You need to be able to tell that 0402 is a bigger base iterarion than 0302. If it’s DDMM 0203 and 0204 don’t appear to be an entire base count apart.

[gls2ro]

I agree we disagree, here is why:

I am talking about what makes sense for people. And most of the people look at the calendar to know what day is today.

Regarding time, if you are asking me I will put minutes before hours in our era where every minute counts.

But before this speedy times, people where mostly concerned with hours.

[mikequinlan]

> You have to learn other cultures' norms if you want to live or work with them. It goes both ways.

You also need to recognize ambiguity and ask for confirmation when you see it. Even in the US people will get confused by 12AM/12PM; when you see either of those times you should double check to see what the person meant. On the other hand, the person setting the time should also have recognized the possible confusion and clarified (i.e. 12 noon or 12 midnight).

[hanche]

Yes, but 12 midnight on Tuesday, what end of Tuesday is it at?

There is a reason insurance policies in the US tend to start at 12:01 am.

[alkonaut]

That there is some diversity we must cater for, there is also diversity we should cater for while pushing for uniformity (and optionally ridiculing the obviously inferior solutions such as imperial measurements, non iso dates or 12-hour clocks).