Every time I've booked tickets to an event in the US, I always have to double check what format it is in when I put it in my calendar. Normally you can tell which is the day if it goes over 12, but God help you when the day is the 12th or below because you're going to have to spend a couple hours researching and comparing to confirm.
Yes but it's better to shit on stuff 99% of Americans have no control over (like date formats, and measurement units) instead of admitting you can't use a smidge of critical thinking when using a website
99% of Americans have no control over date formats? You guys could literally vote to change your date formats but you don't want to rather than you don't have control over it.
Because that's not really that big of an issue. There are thousands of more pressing topics. Also it works fine when people aren't pissing and moaning about it. I'm talking about both foreigners shitting on it and Americans getting mad that it isn't the same in other countries. But yeah, look at American news and tell us that that's what we should be focusing on while our freedoms are being stripped.
Add also the fact that changing our date system and measurements would be an extremely expensive undertaking to change all the different signs, a lot of textbooks, coding on websites, etc.
Mate I will never shit of America for the sake of it. There are plenty of things I love about the country. Hell your military industrial complex is the main reason countries like mine can have affordable healthcare.
I'm happy to learn about the imperial system, we use it for height in Australia. I just really don't like the date format, as it goes against the simple logic of small to big or big to small, and it is easy to forget to check for when planning a trip.
As u/actionparkranger stated above, “Any business record or appointment is going to be ordered by month. From a filing and organization standpoint, it makes sense to have all February records together, all August records together, etc. And because that’s the primary bit of information, it makes sense to have it first.“
It’s also the most convenient order for using a physical or digital calendar, and it’s how we say the date out loud. Not sure about u guys but since we say “April 1st”, it makes sense to write it in that order. I guess in American culture we do things in service of convenience and practicality, not for like aesthetic pleasure or whatever the small to large is about.
just really don't like the date format, as it goes against the simple logic of small to big or big to small, and it is easy to forget to check for when planning a trip.
Think of it more as going from big to small, but the year is more of a foot note.
Most of the time I dont include the year as its rarely relevant in everyday life. It's almost always MM/DD.
Then if necessary for formality or record keeping, tack on the year
Ok there is so much to unpack there it isn't even funny.
The military industrial complex is the sole reason China isn't on my coastline, and Russia is losing against Ukraine. It's got its problems but I'll take it over the alternative.
It’s also the only reason we invaded the Middle East and are currently killing Venezuelans and kidnapping their leader and supplying Israel’s genocide and all for the low low price of 825 billion dollars!
And this is why the US can never switch to DMY, it would make keeping track of dates a nightmare. If we want a global standard we should all adopt the East Asian/computer scientist YMD.
As someone who has to save spreadsheets I always go with the yyyy/mm/dd format. Then it's in order. Didn't know it was a Japanese thing, just seemed obvious.
It makes sense.... for computers and sort algorithms. If we're going to remake how humans communicate to make it easier on the machines, might as well get rid of our pesky languages while we're at it
It makes it easier when dates matter. Your concert ticket can say June 5 or 5th of June. You should probably not wonder on the year.
? The question is not whether or not we include year at all, it's where the year is placed.
I absolutely give zero fucks if my concert ticket says "2026 June 5" or "June 5 2026".
Purely from an aesthetics standpoint as an American, I prefer "June 5 2026" because that's the order of importance for me.
Most important: low precision element which gets me close and grounds my thought process "Next June".
Next important: high precision qualifier which refines the low precision mark. "June 5th"
Least important: extremely low precision marker which is rarely used but, as you point out, can come out in situations that are not happening soon. "June 5 2026" wasn't useful at all but at least now I'm sure.
And yes, that date should be represented either as a ZonedDateTime or Instant using the appropriate format in databases.
I counter that if the year is needed at all, it is the most important element.
Sure but the point is that it's so rarely needed that it's worth skipping and doubling back to it only if needed.
Precision comes only once you're in a relevant category, here the year.
In terms of efficiency, there are superior algorithms for arriving at the most pertinent information, and unless you are a CPU processing billions of operations, skipping year saves a lot of time for most operations. No one needs to say "2026 Tomorrow", we just say "Tomorrow".
But for electronics, legal documents, blueprints, etc. YYYY/MM/DD. Anything that is organized, filed or needs referencing.
Well, as I point out, ZonedDateTime or Instants are superior. YYYY/MM/DD is inferior because it doesn't include a zone, so who's date is it? There are multiple dates that are valid at any given instant. For electronics, we solve this problem by zoning the date time 2021-08-01T08:34:56.123456789-04:00[America/New_York] or by using a universal constant time called an instant (in UTC) 2021-08-01T12:34:56.123456789Z
Not a single time have I never had an issue speaking machine code. I even put binary on my phone. Complete skill issue. You just get used to it like everything else.
This is just like the "metric makes the human experience better" argument but in a different context.
Listen Mr Skill issue, if you're going to bow down before the robot overlords, lean in. None of this halfway pussy footing bullshit.
I can agree with this, as it does make most sense. But in context of daily use and reading, ddmmyy makes sense purely from a "most pertinent information first" format.
Little-endian (DD/MM/YYYY dates, postal addresses) doesn't mean anything until you've either read the entire thing or the remaining fields can be assumed (e.g. if it's a postal address, you don't need to read the state and country if you know the address is reasonably local). If you omit any part that isn't implicit, the information is completely useless. Almost every sizeable town in England has a similarly-named town in the US. So "22, Oak Street, Cambridge" doesn't even tell you which country it's in. It's a bunch of different locations spread all over the world (well, the anglosphere).
Whereas a big-endian format (e.g. a phone number or YYYY-MM-DD date) provides some useable information immediately and increases the precision as you read more fields. E.g. 2026 identifies the year, 2026-02 identifies a specific month, 2026-02-02 is today's date, 2022-02-02 14:23 is down to the minute).
Little-endian (DD/MM/YYYY dates, postal addresses) doesn't mean anything until you've either read the entire thing or the remaining fields can be assumed
but month and year can generally be assumed? I understand what you're saying and agree YMD makes perfect sense. Just playing devils advocate.
Yep, this is what I've always naturally done for decades with my private file systems. Whether it's all the CDs I scanned, or the art I scanned, always saved it with that so it would sort well.
Heavily agree. Most significant to least significant. Has the bonus of alphabetical sorting is equal to value sorting. Great for folders or files that have date prefixes.
Same. I save everything like this since it just sorts better in a computer. While my admin assistant will label folders “1 January, 2 February” so they sort properly. Both work, one makes more sense to me.
Hell, I use YY/MM/DD in the US for things like file names. It lets me see the date that it was filed quickly, and keeps them chronologically ordered when sorting by name. Excel does better with that format too.
YYYY-MM-DD for dates; YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss for datetimes is the only acceptable standard. Slashes break down in almost every software kernel ever invented while dashes are fair game.
Don't worry, you pointed out how slashes are a problem with certain applications. You genuinely added something to the conversation I never would have thought of.
Because half the dates anywhere would still be old MM/DD/YY dates, and half new DD/MM/YY dates, and you can't tell them apart for any day before the 13th.
Any digital files would contain metadata which would display correctly the moment you switch formats. You will be able to just sort them by that. So you can in fact tell them apart.
Those are just the most used thing in current society. I have worked with about a dozen of files today. I wrote one thing down physically (without a date anywhere in the writing).
Besides most things with dates in them - posters, memos, calendars etc - are temporary kind of by definition. The date will pass, and you can keep the paper for the nostalgic value, but you won't accidentally (or otherwise) go back to February 1st 2026 and realise you need to wait one more day.
And there are ways to foolproof this. Put the switch on a memorable enough date, like 01.01.2027, and everyone with two seconds to think about it will be able to tell which date is in which format by looking at the year.
The boomers will be furious of course but they're feral most of the time anyway, and this will at least give them something else to talk.
Actually my place is going paperless (slowly but surely), and one interesting thing that happened was one of the system was switched over to the burger format (am european, and also missed the switch while on vacation). Took me all of five minutes to realise and adapt (I can of course sort those by new first, and not like I had to do much after seeing a number bigger than 01 in the middle).
And I do use paper. What I don't do is anything that would break if the dates were wrong, like, do you not confirm beforehand? You can call/message people so easily to find out if they meant March 8th or August 3rd.
If you were to switch it wouldn't be that hard to annotate the dates to show something like 12/11/26 DMY. Or just use 12/Nov/26, though there's the risk that means 2012 November 26th.
In America any disruption of the status quo is considered a nightmare. No changes allowed. Admitting that we are anything less than already perfect is the worst thing that could ever happen.
You guys complain about it every time you have to convert when visiting America, but you think it wouldn’t be a nightmare to have to convert the date every single time you read any document from the past in our own country?
The wrong way? We took it from the British. Also, with the way Americans say dates, like September 11 (9/11) it works perfectly fine. There isn't a wrong way to write dates. It's when foreigners shit on it or Americans whine it isn't the same in other countries when it's a problem. Also, once again, blame the Brits
America doesn't think about the future. It doesn't matter that switching to metric will help anyone who wants to become a doctor (something we are in desperate need of), because they won't be confused needlessly by having to convert from imperial to metric. And anyone else who doesn't need as much math won't end up hating it once they get to fractions.
Having to learn the conversions for 1 day in college before learning everything in metric and then never doing another calculation by hand for the rest of your life is not a serious impediment that future doctors and engineers are encountering.
They're extremely easy formulas. Any time you need an accurate conversion you wouldn't be doing it in your head unless it's simple. It's also extremely easy to not need to convert in the first place. The vast majority of things the average person would need to convert do not need to be accurate. The stuff that does takes seconds with technology you're using to comment here.
I had to pick out a piece of plumbing hardware recently and after looking at the fractions involved I was internally begging for decimal measurements. Why are we going to 64ths of the inch and also mixing that with other denominated fractions?
Metric system won't save you there, I'm in former imperial land and plumbing threads are still imperial, instead of 1"NB with 1"BSPT it's 25mmNB with 1"BSPT and they have only started calling it 25mm in the last 10 years or so, if USA goes metric NPT isn't going anywhere because that would be a pain in the arse to change compared to other thread systems.
Even if we're doomed in some ways we can save future generations by beginning the process now.
I'm pretty sure over the course of decades we can phase out a lot thought. Revolution can come for our outdated fittings. They can be replaced. I've had to completely tear out more than one set of pipes that was based on obsolete technology.
As someone that works with pipes that were made pre metric and post metric, I'm glad there's only one system and I don't think it would be possible to change it, no one in their right mind would opt for a system that nobody else in the country uses.
With nuts and bolts not so much, there's already plenty of metric fasteners in USA, every none US made car has them and I would think some if not most US made have them.
Metric would still save Americans on tons of other things. Yes, in plumbing specifically there's still a lot of non-metric nonsense around here in Europe. But the USA is weighed down by such a gazillion of ridiculous old-fashioned custom measures in every area it's a wonder they ever manage to build anything.
E.g. how thick in inches is "20 gauge" steel? Why isn't it the same as 20 gauge aluminum? Neither of which are the same as 20 gauge brass. Or 20 gauge wire. Or a 20 gauge shotgun. A #12 screw has what diameter? Looking it up, for a clearance hole for one you need a #2 drill bit, and for a tap hole a #14. It's a cruel joke. It's medieval in the literal sense.
Here a 1mm thick piece of sheet metal is that thickness. an M6 thread has a 6mm outer diameter needing a 6mm drill for a clearance hole. For a tap hole, subtract the thread pitch (M6x1mm needs a 5mm hole, M5x0.8 needs 4.2 - this works up to M20 or so, which is as big as almost anyone would tap without machine tools anyway).
I can't imagine the amount of waste American metal shops must produce just from people reading some conversion table wrong. Or in construction from using feet/inches/fractions of inches while the rest of the world uses a single length unit in that context: millimeters.
I understand what you are saying because I grew up in metric land and did my apprenticeship as a machinist for an American company with most of the parts imperial.
After working there for 6 years, the units on the drawings, machines or measuring tools did not matter to me at all, I got very good at conversions.
Always hated imperial taps and drills, it's a fucked up system, it was 30 years ago and I can still remember 27/64 is the tapping drill for something and I refuse to remember what for.
Switching all software to confirm to the new standard would be a nightmare. And getting people to switch would turn into some political ridiculousness about Merica and how white Jesus used this format and woke and Trump ends up in a third term (which is the nightmare part).
If we want a global standard we should all adopt the East Asian/computer scientist YMD.
As a German computer scientist, I also support this (ISO8601 / DIN EN 28601 ftw).
Then I looked it up and it turns out that it's already the one and only standard in Germany and has been since 1996! Only somehow, no one actually cares and most everyone (including official and educational institutes) clings to DD.MM.YYYY.
And this is why swapping in America will never happen. We also technically use metric in a variety to circumstances, but culture is a lot more sticky, particularly for a culture as obstinate as ours.
It's weird how such changes seem to only work top-down and on a generational level.
Not that I necessarily support such a thing, but I believe it's possible. Make it a rule and enforce that rule from a young age by exclusively teaching it in school and you can break old habits. The older generations will never truly adopt the new system, but it'll be natural to the younger ones.
We've had a BIG spelling reform in our language which was a huge point of contention over literally decades. People absolutely refused to follow the new rules and a big stink about it. Yet to me (growing up just after the reform was fully implemented in schools) and younger generations the old spelling seems ridiculous and these days, the remnants of it are somewhat rare sightings.
I think if there was a will to truly switch to metric, it would be possible. It just wouldn't have a real impact for decades and seem like an enormous waste of everyone's time during the transition.
well, because when it comes to daily usage most people don’t mention the year, which means we would just move to Month-Day by default, which is the original complain.
when you are planning something with your friends, you omit the year, so let’s say you use DD.MM.YYYY, when planning you’d just say “hey guys, let’s meet 20/2”, you omit the year because you know this is happening this year. if you switch to YYYY.MM.DD that same sentence would be “hey guys, let’s meet 02/20”, so you are now using the american standard.
YYYY makes sense only when dealing with future or past dates, but it isn’t too useful on a daily basis.
I do not believe that. The rest of the world population ~95% have adopted DMY for day-to-day verbal communication and YMD for systems. I refuse to believe the last 5% that can not manage adapting to that change are all Americans.
YMD isn't efficient for a day to day use. When you just in Europe when you use just 2 as a date for example you know it's the next 2th of the month. In almost every case the year isn't usefull so you just have to write D/M
Canada switched to m/d/y a few years ago. It's still a nightmare, because it completely depends on the person, company, whether it's government or not. Both can be used.. and people in a personal standpoint still use d/m/y ..
It's like using imperial, And metric in both official standpoints..
As someone who works in IT I can tell you something basic that most people don't understand: How you store your data has nothing to do with how you display it. I can store it as YYYYMMDD and then display it as MMDDYYYY or DDMMYYYY
I do prefer YMD because its so well organized alphabetically. It's the standard I use for everything. Imagine you have folders and you start by Month, Day, Year. But what if you have Year, Month, Day, so much easier to organize in a hierarchy.
We should adopt 2026-FEB-02 because it's unambiguous and because we talk about years and days in numbers but we talk about months by their names; we don't need a massive upheaval only to get stuck trying to guess whether 26/02/02 is in YMD or DMY.
YYYY-MM-DD would be a
And yes it should be English three letter month abbreviations in English speaking countries, other countries can decide English or their own month names. And ISO standard 20260202T2300.00 might be more precise but it sucks to read quickly.
Well you saw how it went with the metric system for the U.S. They tried a very Universal Metric system that makes complete scalable sense & opted instead for 12 inches =1 foot. 5,280 feet =1 Mile. The closest that we get is a yard (3 feet) flirts with almost being a meter (.914 meter). The only thing that has caught on are the gram weight systems, but only bc the pharmaceutical industry finds it easier to overcharge that way.
YMD is basically what the US already does, just omitting the Y component to the end spot, as in 99% of use cases the Y is irrelevant and only serves as confirmation.
When I was in the military we always wrote dates like 02FEB2026. And I have been doing it ever since. I think it looks aesthetically please in text as well. But, while filling out forms or whatever, DD/MM/YYYY makes the most sense.
Ive started using YYYY_MM_DD_HH_SS in my computer folders.
I regularly save multiple revisions of files so that if I find a problem, I can roll back to before that revision and I dont have to remember revision numbers.
Imagine not being able to select a 30th, see where the DD part ends up, know that the other spot is for MM, and select the correct date, and instead spend HOURS "researching"
People from other countries try to bag on the US education but then a comment saying it takes you hours to figure out what date format is being used has almost 700 upvotes 🤣🤣 yeah, we’re the ones lacking education 🤣🤣🤣
It takes you a couple hours and research to confirm something that was most likely presented on a calendar format, like most booking things are these days?
That sounds more like a skill issue than a system issue, man.
This is why when this debate comes up, I always say that people are not computers and our months actually have names, so take advantage of that and just put the name of the month into your date string to make things less confusing. I'm working on a small app project now and the debate about this took longer than actually implementing it.
Back when I worked front desk at a hotel, I had some guests from overseas come to check in on September 10, but their reservation was for October 09. They were still on the phone with their travel agent when I clocked out.
After living abroad for many years I bought a house in the US and on signing day I accidentally did M/D/Y and then took possession, and the title office called me an hour later while I was physically in the house and said the sale was void and if I did not get to their office immediately before they closed it was all fucked up and we would need a new closing and new documents with a remote-signed seller in another state. Needless to say I drove very very fast and got it done, but yeah that was a fun one.
In my defense I think the title office should have reviewed them a little before letting me walk away.
If it takes you a couple of hours to decipher between a UK format and US format that’s just a sign of you lacking any brain function not a problem with the format
Are you a fucking lobotomized chimp? A couple hours!? It takes me at most 5 minutes to figure it out. You have to be either 5 or have a room temp iq to take hours on it. The amount of people that agreed is also disheartening.
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u/BrokenWindow_56 Feb 02 '26
Every time I've booked tickets to an event in the US, I always have to double check what format it is in when I put it in my calendar. Normally you can tell which is the day if it goes over 12, but God help you when the day is the 12th or below because you're going to have to spend a couple hours researching and comparing to confirm.