this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2025
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ISO 8601 ftw rule (gregtech.eu)
submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

[email protected] gang, rise up

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[–] j4k3 104 points 2 weeks ago

MM ≠ MM !!!

[–] [email protected] 92 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

"Europe", as if there weren't several languages in Europe with different date formats per language...

[–] [email protected] 87 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

None of which start with the month because that would be fuckin stupid

[–] htrayl 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Meh. It's getting a lot of hate here, but I think it works well in casual short term planning. Context (July) - > precision (15).

If I want to communicate the day in the current month, I just say the day, no month.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

ok but by that logic you'd start with the year

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

No because the year is a super large time; there's a reason people always say they take a bit to adjust to writing the new year in dates because it's s long enough period of time that it almost becomes automatic.

For archiving, sure; most other things, no (logically, ISO-8601 is probably the best for most cases, in general, but I'll die on the hill that MM-DD-YYYY is better than DD-MM-YYYY).

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

well either you omit the year, or you start with it

americans start with the month and end with the year, which is totally wild

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

This pyramid visualisation doesn't work for me, unless you read time starting with seconds.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

A pyramid is built bottom to top, not top to bottom. That's also one of the strengths of the ISO format. You can add/remove layers for arbitrary granularity and still have a valid date.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, but people read top to bottom. The best way to do it would be to have upside down pyramids. With the biggest blocks at the top representing the biggest unit of time (YYYY) and the smallest blocks at the bottom representing seconds & smaller.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I get it, just pyramids are misleading, also year-month-day is better because resulting number always grows. 😺

[–] Zachariah 30 points 2 weeks ago
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

2025-01-26T11:40:20, you mean?

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I work with international clients and use 2025-01-26 format. Without it.. confusion.

[–] ByteJunk 30 points 2 weeks ago

That's an ISO date, and it's gorgeous. It's the only way I'll accept working with dates and timezones, though I'll make am exception for end-user facing output, and format it according to locale if I'm positive they're not going to feed into some other app.

[–] czardestructo 35 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm almost 40 and now just realizing my insistence on how to structure all my folders and notes is actually an ISO standard. Way to go me.

[–] valkyre09 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I stumbled upon it years ago because sorting by name sorts by date. There was no other thought put into it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

It's incredibly annoying that in clinical research we are prohibited from using it because every date must comply with the GCP format (DD mmm yyyy). Every file has the GCP date appended to the end.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I don't know why anyone would ever argue against this. Least precise to most precise. Like every other number we use.

(I don't know if this is true for EVERY numerical measure, but I'm sure someone will let me know of one that doesn't)

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

YYYY.MM.DD HH.MM.SS, as eru ilúvatar intended

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago

My stupid ass read this top to bottom and I was confused why anyone would start with seconds

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

All my homies hate ISO, RFC 3339 for the win.

[–] amon 21 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

All my homies hate ISO

Said no-one ever?

EDIT: thanks for informing me i now retract my position

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Nah, ISO is a shit organization. The biggest issue is that all of their "standards" are blocked behind paywalls and can't be shared. This creates problems for open source projects that want to implement it because it inherently limits how many people are actually able to look at the standard. Compare to RFC, which always has been free. And not only that, it also has most of the standards that the internet is built upon (like HTTP and TCP, just to name a few).

Besides that, they happily looked away when members were openly taking bribes from Microsoft during the standardization of OOXML.

In any case, ISO-8601 is a garbage standard. P1Y is a valid ISO-8601 string. Good luck figuring out what that means. Here's a more comprehensive page demonstrating just how stupid ISO-8601 is: https://github.com/IJMacD/rfc3339-iso8601

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

if i am not wrong, it is because essentially both are same (slight differences in what is allowed and what is not, https://github.com/IJMacD/rfc3339-iso8601), but RFC is more free as in freedom

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 weeks ago

finally a correct version of this diagram

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I know, why don't we all agree to agree and use every single possible format within a shared spreadsheet

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Oh god it's so true...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

I use ss/mm/hh/dd/MM/YYYY

t.european

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

I often have to refrain myself from using ISO-8601 in regular emails. In a business context the MM/DD/YYYY is so much more prevalent that I don't want to stand out.

Filenames on a share drive though? ISO-8601 all the way idgaf

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

In one work report, I recorded the date as "1/13/25", "13/1/25" and "13JAN2025"

I have my preference, but please for the love of all that is fluffy in the universe, just stick to one format....

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago (18 children)

Maybe in programming or technical documentation, but no, when I check the date I want to know the day and the month, beyond that, it's all unnecessary information for everyday use, and we have it right in Europe.

You can't change my mind. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] lurklurk 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

You can’t change my mind.

That's not a good thing. That attitude limits you from improving how you do things because you've gotten emotionally attached to some arbitrary ... never mind. Have a nice day.

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[–] Maggoty 13 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Mmm US military date and time is fun too.

DDMMMYYYYHHMM and time zone identifier. So 26JAN20251841Z.

So much fun.

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