[jchw]

> yes, this blog is a proud user of the european date format - if you don't want to see yyyy-mm-dd's, please press alt-f4 and go back to boycotting bud light or something

Interesting to call this the "european date format", given that prior to ISO 8601 I'm pretty sure this date order was almost entirely used in East Asia and not Europe. To me day-month-year will always be the European date order.

[reaperducer]

To me day-month-year will always be the European date order.

If you're a fan of digging through old letters in British antiques stores, you'll find that the "American" date format that people on the internet like to complain about was inherited from Britain (along with the imperial measurement system).

It was only after the American Revolutionary War that Britain switched to putting the day before the month. Probably during one of its many Francophilia phases that seem to come and go throughout its history.

[xenadu02]

Fun fact: you can be the change you want to see!

I fill out all paper forms and typed dates as yyyy-MM-dd wherever possible. No one has ever been confused by it. Some have even copied it.

I also give units in metric sometimes and set some of my thermometers to C to help build my intuition for what different C temps feel like.

On the other hand I'm setting up a hobby machine shop at home and trying to use metric or a metric lathe would involve too much swimming upstream so alas - it is all imperial stuff.

[wl]

I've had forms rejected for using ISO-8601 dates in the US. I still do it by default and only amend things if asked to.

[userbinator]

I like to think of them as Big Endian (yyyy-mm-dd), Little Endian (dd-mm-yyyy), and Middle Endian (mm-dd-yyyy).

[godelski]

Actually a really smart way to teach endian. I no longer need to do that but it would have been useful lol

[Patryk27]

Ah, you're right - I wanted to include a dunk, but forgot to actually fact-check it! -- gotta figure out something better.

[DiggyJohnson]

Why would you want to do that? I don’t think Europeans realize how familiar technical and engineering minded Americans are with metric. It’s just so overplayed.

GP is right my default reaction as a MM/DD/YYYY dumb American was that you didn’t make sense because that is the internationally standardized unambiguous format and what we all use for dates where sorting or i18n matters. Sorry for rant you probably don’t deserve it but for real that is the lamest joke imaginable and your content is good enough that it doesn’t need “dunks”

Edit: get dunked on

[Patryk27]

> that is the lamest joke imaginable and your content is good enough that it doesn’t need “dunks”

Hah - fair enough!

[godelski]

Conspiracy theory: US will never switch to metric because then you'd sell half as many tools.

I'm joking of course but there's a grain of truth. The meme of a lost 10mm socket is just as true in America and most tool sets come with both imperial and metric sizes. It's really annoying to have to double up. But wouldn't be America if we didn't have unnecessary complexity, right? Can't be a real programmer™ without facing that on a daily basis

[cypherpunk666]

better mousetraps solutions exist: https://metrinch.com/metrinch_en/

[Philpax]

Seems like the dig dug into you to make you respond like this.

[flexagoon]

> To me day-month-year will always be the European date order.

Please don't use dd-mm-yyyy. It's better to use different separators to clarify the date format. The three common formats are yyyy-mm-dd, dd.mm.yyyy and mm/dd/yyyy.

[rpep]

Much of that depends on country for usage.

In the U.K. when handwriting I think dd/mm/yyyy is much more common than dd.mm.yyyy

[jchw]

> Please don't use dd-mm-yyyy

I wasn't listing a date format, but a date order; the dashes were not meant to be separators. That said, I tend to use year-month-day, in RFC-3339 format. Although I honestly don't lose sleep about it.

> It's better to use different separators to clarify the date format. The three common formats are yyyy-mm-dd, dd.mm.yyyy and mm/dd/yyyy.

As an American, I most commonly see day-month-year written as "April 17th, 2025" or "4/17/2025". I'm sure "4.17.2025" exists, but e.g. it is not what a locale-aware date formatter will output for U.S. locale.

Here's my hot take: One should generally either use locale-specific date formatting, or use RFC 3339 or ISO 8601. They both have a time and a place where they are more appropriate. Sometimes it's just simply going to be more correct and less confusing to use a locale-specific date format, especially if you have to deal with passing dates between different entities. (As an example, if I were filing legal documents, I would most assuredly use the standard in a given locale for dates. Maybe a long, unambiguous form just to be safe, if it happens to be applicable.) In any case, using another option that isn't either of these seems counter-productive to me.

I think it's weird how people get overly attached to issues like these. It is a shame that date formats can be ambiguous, occasionally causing preventable problems, but we'll survive. Stuff like this doesn't get fixed over night.

[godelski]

What about \d{2} \w+ \d{2,4}

[hk1337]

1. where did you find that on the page?

2. it's, ironic?, because the post dates are in dd-mm-yyyy

[Patryk27]

I've redacted that part (https://github.com/Patryk27/website/commit/818c27967d7e6332c...), since it doesn't quite make sense if you think about it for longer than a couple seconds; it's 23:02 for me at the moment, maybe the night will bring me a new joke!

[LtdJorge]

Yep, I knew it as the Japanese format

[benjadolele]

Not just Japanese, but I believe most East Asian countries as well.

Interestingly, not only with dates, but they order things from the “biggest” to the “smallest”

Like Year-month-day for dates.

Family name - personal names for names.

And for address, they start with country, city, street name, then house number. Opposite of what is more common in western countries. I actually find it more useful as very often I remember which street my friends live in but not the house number, and I can type it in and expect google maps to give me the result based on my search history. Not so useful with house numbers if you can’t remember them.

[reaperducer]

And for address, they start with country, city, street name, then house number.

A generalization that does not apply in places like Tokyo, where many houses are numbered by their age, and street names are not used at all.

[perching_aix]

Also applies to Hungarian and Lithuanian, which are in Europe. Still, I agree, weird to characterize it as European.