[jacquesm]

> I like it, I will be formatting all my years to 5 digits from now on.

Please don't, it's highly irritating and usually just serves as a way to get people to discuss the leading zero rather than the subject they were really interested in in the first place. Leading zeros aren't a thing for a reason. It's about as useful as expressing the temperature in Kelvin.

[aydyn]

Coincidentally, the temperatures in the Farmer's Almanac are all in Kelvin.

[jacquesm]

Degrees Kelvin has its place, just as leading zeros. The Farmer's Almanac may have a point but if they do I can't see it and to put a leading zero in front of a year is just annoying. Think about it: how would you pronounce the dates from now on, are you really going to say 'Today is the 7th of november of zero-two-zero-two-five'? And why stop at one zero, really forward thinking people should start counting from the big bang up, that's as close as you can get to the Kelvin analogy, might as well take it all the way then.

[ninalanyon]

> Degrees Kelvin

Not degrees. The unit is simply the kelvin.

[jacquesm]

You are right.

[tdeck]

If they do indeed use Kelvin, perhaps it's to reduce percent error? :)

[do_not_redeem]

Well said. Five-digit years are the Shadow the Hedgehog of rationalism. But he successfully derailed the thread and took the spotlight for himself, so... mission accomplished, I guess.

[kstrauser]

It’s big “look at me” energy, coupled with that user citing years way more often than most.

Some person: I like yams.

Person in question: Me too, since I had my first one in 01985 or so.

[jacquesm]

That's an interesting - and falsifiable - observation.

Quick check: 1984 rates 15103 mentions, 01984 42. So about 0.3%.

For 2015 it is 69000 vs 89 for 02015.

But not all of those are years, there are some other cases in there as well.

[kstrauser]

That was a synthesized example of how they insert years seemingly for the sake of formatting it weirdly. Now that I’ve pointed it out to you, next time you see this come up, ask yourself if anyone else would have mentioned a date in that context.

If I were them, I might end this comment with “I haven’t seen it done like that since I first got online, in around 01993.”

[jacquesm]

It's a bit like vegetarians/vegans or people that don't have TV.

It usually gets dropped in the first five minutes of meeting and after that it gets repeated if it is initially ignored.

[eichin]

How many of those are actually (New England) zip codes? (and of the ones that are years, how many of them are "kragen is at it again" :-) Seriously, I've never noticed a thread on these and not found a kragen post as a trigger, but there's probably sampling bias in that - or maybe the intersection of "people who are into the Long Now Foundation" and HN posters is that small?)

[euroderf]

Octal schmoctal eh

[9rx]

> Leading zeros aren't a thing for a reason.

If they aren't a thing, why are we talking about them? Clearly they're a thing. And not even an obscure thing. If you've ever used commonly used representations like ZIP codes, bank account numbers, or serial numbers you'll no doubt have encountered it before. And that even goes for dates. ISO 8601, for example, requires leading zeros, including for the year component. "1" is not considered a valid year under that standard. It must be represented as "0001". Granted, ISO 8601 only requires a minimum of four characters to represent the year, but expecting at least five characters is conceptually just as valid.

[icehawk]

> If they aren't a thing, why are we talking about them?

Because someone decided to break convention and use one in a four-digit year.

[9rx]

The question asks why we're talking about something that is purportedly not a thing, not a quest to find further confirmation of it being a thing. Swing and a miss.

[icehawk]

I'm sorry about your miss there.

[9rx]

Don't be. Computers don't have feelings.