• jerieljan@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      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)

      • Ddhuud@lemmy.world
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        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.

        • jerieljan@lemmy.ml
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          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.

        • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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          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.