[codegeek]

A good design will actually specify the format (mm/dd/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy) or just let you use a date picker/calendar. So no confusions there.

[baby]

I just want to note that only americans use the mm/dd/yyyy and that it's pretty non-logical. So no problem outside the US.

[minikites]

Times and dates are already non-logical. 24 hours in a day but 7 days in a week? Some months have more or less days than other months? Seriously?

http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programm...

http://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-pro...

[baby]

I don't get how this is non-logical compared to what I said earlier. 24hour is the same excuse as the empirical system, you can divide 12 by 2,3,4,6 thus it makes things easier. It's a different system than the metric one, we could have said that a day lasted 100hours and week 10days. It doesn't make it non-logical though, it's like changing the basis.

But ordering makes things logical.

[rmc]

OK, so the "non-logical" argument is irrelevant. But the "this is only in the USA" argument still stands.

[gazrogers]

The original comment I replied to was suggesting that the date picker was a bad thing. My point is that it's better than any other method, since parsing a date correctly for all people in all situations in the way implied in that post is not possible. There will always be ambiguity over the date if the user chooses to use 'dd/mm/yyyy' or 'mm/dd/yyyy'. Chaking location, or locale isn't much use - we brits go to America on occasion, and they come over here. If you mark it as [dd/mm/yyyy] then you've just limited the usefulness of 'a free-form date that gets parsed smartly'.