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Which protocol or open standard do you like or wish was more popular? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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There are a couple I have in mind. Like many techies, I am a huge fan of RSS for content distribution and XMPP for federated communication.

The really niche one I like is S-expressions as a data format and configuration in place of json, yaml, toml, etc.

I am a big fan of Plaintext formats, although I wish markdown had a few more features like tables.

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[+] [email protected] -10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Except that DDMMYY has the huge ambiguity issue of people potentially interpreting it as MMDDYY.

Yes and YYYY-MM-DD can potentially be interpreted as YYYY-DD-MM. So that is an zero argument.

I never said that the date format should never used, just that significants is a arbitrary value, what significant means depends on the context. If YYYY-MM-DD would be so great in everyday use then more or even most people would use it, because people, in general, tend to do things that make their life easier.

There is no superior date format, there are just date format that are better for specific use cases.

My team switched to using YYYY-MM-DD in all our inner communication and documents

That is great for your team, but I don't think that your team has a size large enough to have any kind of statistically relevance at all. So it is a great example for a specific use case but not an argument for general use at all.

[–] suigenerix 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yes and YYYY-MM-DD can potentially be interpreted as YYYY-DD-MM. So that is an zero argument.

No country uses "year day month" ordered dates as standard. "Month day year, " on the other hand, has huge use. It's the conventions that cause the potential for ambiguity and confusion.

That is great for your team, but I don't think that your team has a size large enough to have any kind of statistically relevance at all. So it is a great example for a specific use case but not an argument for general use at all.

Entire countries, like China, Japan, Korea, etc., use YYYY-MM-DD as their date standard already.

My point was that once you adjust, it actually isn't painful to use as it first appears it could be, and has great advantages. I didn't say there wasn't an adjustment hurdle that many people would bawk at.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_date_formats_by_country

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Entire countries, like China, Japan, Korea, etc., use YYYY-MM-DD as their date standard already.

And every person in those countries uses YYYY-MM-DD always in their day to day communication? I really doubt that. I am sure even in those countries most people will still use short forms in different formats.

[–] suigenerix 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, and their shorthand versions, like writing 9/4, have the same problem of being ambiguous.

You keep missing the point and moving the goal posts, so I'll just politely exit here and wish you well. Peace.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

I never moved the goalposts, all I always said was that a forced and clunky date format like YYYY-MM-DD will never find broad use or acceptance in the major population of the world. It is not made for easy day to day use.

If it sounded like I moved goalposts, that maybe due to english as a second language. Sorry for that.

But yes, I think we both have made our positions and statements clear, and there is not really a common ground for us. Not because one of us would be right or wrong but because we are not talking about the topic on the same level of abstraction. I talk about it from a social, very down to the ground perspective and you are at least 2 levels of abstraction above that. Nothing wrong with that but we just don't see the same picture.

And yes using YYYY-MM-DD would be great, I don't say anything against that on a general level, I just don't ever see any chance for it used commonly.

So thank you for the great discussion and have a nice day.