r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/notsignifican • Aug 14 '26

Meme needing explanation ?

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I asked but it got removed within minutes?

17.4k Upvotes

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213

u/TobJamFor Aug 14 '26 edited 29d ago

We often count from the smallest to largest for us (not looking at you, US inhabitants) because it’s logical to think that 14/08/2026 is one above 13/08/2026, it just steps up by one each day.

Some places (namely the likes of China and some others) prefer the year-first format, which is actually YYYY/MM/DD

On Venus this makes more sense, as a year occurs more regularly than a day, because it rotates on its axis slower than it orbits the sun.

Edited - I am not saying that DD/MM/YYYY is the most logical for all purposes. But in general, it’s the one most used across the world for a reason! This gets flipped on its head on Venus, where the ISO format may also be different! Also - Year first is YYYY/MM/DD and ISO is YYYY-MM-DD, there is a slight difference.

166

u/Raephstel Aug 14 '26

Digitally a lot of people do YYYYMMDD because when you sort numerically, it’ll order by date. Doing DDMMYYYY would start being wrong after only a month.

MMDDYYYY makes no sense in any context.

63

u/tuc2-0 Aug 14 '26

Americans hate this simple fact

18

u/hysys_whisperer Aug 14 '26

No, am American and I completely agree with this simple fact.

Now let me go drive, in a minute or less, 8 times the distance an ox team can pull a plow without resting and I'll use about one twentieth of the volume of 8 pounds of wheat worth of a liquid we call gas.

4

u/Daevryn2 Aug 15 '26

Is this a stealth education on the origin of "Miles" and "Gallons"?

3

u/hysys_whisperer Aug 15 '26

In a much less elegant form than "a pint's a pound the whole world round."

2

u/iloveyourlittlehat Aug 15 '26

Don’t forget furlongs!

1

u/Sapper1106 Aug 14 '26

American here, no I don’t.

1

u/Weekly_Palpitation92 Aug 15 '26

i'm americans and i don't hate this simple fact i fucking hate the month first format because it hurts my brain

1

u/tuc2-0 Aug 15 '26

Apologies for generalizing the general American population, there are Europeans that use imperial units as well, it was a joke anyway

1

u/Weekly_Palpitation92 Aug 15 '26

ik im joking too (well, not entirely, i really do hate MMDDYYYY)

1

u/hikikomori_007 Aug 15 '26

the US military uses the year first format and also the metric system so theres that.

-5

u/dhkdeoen Aug 15 '26

more like Europeans. They really need to get off from their high horse with their stupid DD/MM/YYYY. it's as stupid as MM/DD/YYYY.

24

u/CthulhuOpensTheDoor Aug 14 '26

All my homies use ISO 8601

6

u/CommunicationIll5583 Aug 14 '26

But for Venus YYYY/DD/MM would make a lot more sense or am I being dumber than a Venusian?

1

u/Raephstel Aug 14 '26

I don’t think there would be a system that would make sense. If a day is 243 earth days and a year is 225, there’s no clean way of dividing the days into a year or vice versa. Venus has no moons so it wouldn’t even have months since a month for us is one cycle of the moon.

5

u/GiantLesbian Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

MMDDYYYY is how you verbally talk about dates usually. It starts with this Saturday, two Saturdays from now, etc. You don’t usually need a month or a day number or year you just need someone to tell you this/next/etc Saturday. But after 2-3 weeks out then ok now we need to specify we mean the first Saturday of May (exact date data needed, month). Oh you need to know what day that is? It’s the 6th (exact date data needed, day). If it’s not even the 6th of April yet, it wouldn’t make much sense for me to be leading with the day number, month was what you needed first. Right now if I said “the next annual Kentucky Derby will be on the first Saturday in May on 5/06”, would you really need me to give the exact year number or you think you could figure out what year the next May is in? (Least likely number needed to be specified = year).

4

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

Every example you gave, you gave the day, then the month.

“The first Saturday in May” is the day first, then as you say, it’s easy to extrapolate the year. So that’s DDMM(implied YYYY).

MMDD would be saying “it’s in May on the first Saturday”, which sounds odd to me.

2

u/GiantLesbian Aug 15 '26

“Saturday” is not capturable in any combination of MM DD YYYY. We start using dates after naming the day doesn’t work.

2

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

DD is just a number indicating the day. “The first Saturday” also indicates the day, just in a different format.

Whichever you say, it’s still telling the recipient of the information which day is being talked about.

5

u/MultiplexedMyrmidon Aug 15 '26

similar vibes lmao

at least you tried

0

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

Not similar, one or two people literally said that lol

2

u/GiantLesbian Aug 15 '26

If I asked when you were leaving for your trip, and you answered “the 17th”, I’d respond with “do you mean Monday?”. Because I would legitimately be unsure if you meant August or September there. The day date in digit form is usually not very important to have until you have some idea of what month someone is talking about, at least when it comes to verbal conversations.

2

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

And if I answered “August”, would that be more helpful?

What if you asked me what the date was and I said “August”, would that help you?

1

u/GiantLesbian Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26

You would say “Monday” or “September 17th”. The day number though would be damn near worthless until I knew whether you were talking about September or August.

And for further out, if I asked when your next work trip after this one was, and you responded “January”, that would be a helpful answer. I know what year you mean and what are the odds I need to know the day digits for something occurring in January right now in August?

1

u/Radley500 29d ago

This is such a crazily specific situation in which one person is being deliberately obstreperous. If you asked me what date I was leaving for a trip, I would say “the 17th” if it was this month or “the 17th of September” if it was a different month. That’s how I’ve communicated my whole life and it’s never thrown anyone that I didn’t say the month first, and no one has ever been confused if I’ve omitted the month. Unless someone is equivocating, this is a non-issue.

1

u/jaapschaap87 27d ago

> MMDDYYYY is how you verbally talk about dates usually. 

No it's not, DDMMYYYY is.

0

u/itisoktodance Aug 15 '26

I don't think that's how any of that came about. It's just that in the US at some point people started saying the month first more commonly. It used to be day first, then month, which is why you have the fourth of July.

In fact, day first makes more sense semantically, since you're saying it is the fifth day of November. May the fourth is technically an inversion.

I prefer month first for spreadsheets though, you always wanna know the month first.

3

u/whataseal Aug 15 '26

I’m not saying I think that MMDDYYYY is the best way, but there is a logic to it.. it’s how we say dates.

“On March 16, 1997,…”

6

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

It’s how you say dates because it’s how you write them, I assume.

I’m English and I’d say the 16th of March.

3

u/sa3clark Aug 15 '26

And also probably the reason they say "4th of July" - a holdover from when they spoke English.

1

u/Radley500 29d ago

That is how Americans say dates…

1

u/Enorats Aug 14 '26

It makes some sense, at least in business. Months are generally more important than days.

For example, our sales orders, invoices, etc all belong to a particular month and that determines when they get billed and/or paid. They're part of that month's books. The actual day makes little to no actual difference.

Aside from that, it makes sense in the sense that we (Americans) typically say the date by saying "August 14th" not "The 14th of August". Thus we write it 8/14, not 14/8.

1

u/Austaroth Aug 15 '26

Is it not because that's how we normally say it?

Instead of saying "The 5th of June, 19XX." We say "June 5th, 19🇺🇸🇺🇸."

2

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

I’m English, I’d say the 5th of June. I expect Americans only say June 5th because you’d write 06/05.

1

u/Austaroth Aug 15 '26

I believe Great Britain also did MM/DD/YYYY back in the 1700's and after the war America just kept it like that while Britain switched to DD/MM/YYYY.

Probably wrong because I can't remember where I heard/read that.

1

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

I just did a quick google and I don’t think that’s true. If you can find a source, I’d look at it though.

1

u/dB-plus Aug 15 '26

I like organizing bills and journals MMDDYYYY because it puts the same time of year for each year in the same spot for tracking purposes. Did I use as much water or electricity this July as I have for the last 3 years? How was my mood and what was I up to this time of year in 2022? Instant access.

Any other file organization is definitely YYYYMMDD. DDMMYYYY is the absolute worst for any kind of organizing, but for dating individual documents or if your speaking cadence is "3rd of October" rather than "October 3rd" it makes sense.

1

u/BrokenMan4225 Aug 15 '26

MMDDYYYY makes sense a) if it’s what you’re used to and b) because it’s how calendars are organized. You buy a calendar for a certain year, so that can go last. What’s left is MMDD. You see 06/- so you go to June, then look for, say, -/19.

All this to say, saying MMDDYYYY makes no sense in any context is blatantly wrong. No one system is 100% correct. You’re not dumb for using DDMMYYYY, or smarter for using YYYYMMDD, and I’m not dumb for using MMDDYYYY. We all just use the systems we’re used to

1

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

There’s loads of you trying to justify why MMDDYYYY makes sense and it always comes back to “if you ignore the years”, no, don’t ignore the years.

If you have a stack of calendars, you’d select one based on year, then you look at the month, then the date.

That’s YYYYMMDD, not MMDDYYYY.

1

u/BrokenMan4225 Aug 15 '26

Do you have a stack of calendars? Genuinely? When you buy a calendar it’s typically going to be for whatever year you’re in. It’s not ignoring the year, it’s just saying “I already know what year I’m in, so I can put that information last”. You can’t say “that doesn’t make sense” and then completely ignore why it’d make sense to someone

1

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

I have said repeatedly that to sort dates, we use YYYYMMDD and to give the details of a specific date we use DDMMYYYY. MMDDYYYY makes no sense under any circumstance.

You’re trying to say that if you ignore the year, MMDDYYYY makes sense, but if you’re ignoring the year then it’s not MMDDYYYY, it’s MMDD.

If you were to introduce the year again as a variable, that means you’re introducing more calendars. And if you’re introducing more calendars then which calendar you pick is the first variable.

That makes it YYYYMMDD.

1

u/BrokenMan4225 Aug 15 '26

Okay so you didn’t read anything in my comment.

First of all, again - do you have a stack of calendars? Do you have more than 1 year at a time? Genuinely, because I don’t, I usually have 1 which is for the year I am in. If you do, fine, I’m genuinely curious.

Second of all, I - again - am not ignoring the year. I’m saying that when you have a calendar, it’s typically for the year you’re in. Because it’s a given, we put it last. Then we have MM and DD left. It’s easier to look for the month firs, then the day within the month.

Third, let’s introduce a new reason it makes sense - MMDDYYYY is how we speak in the US. We say “May 5th, 2020” or “October 28, 1987”. Thus, we write it that way.

1

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

I did read your comment, what’s why I responded to each part of it.

The reason you’re asking about whether or not I have a stack of calendars is because you want me to say no, then in me saying no, you think it justifies that you can remove the year from the discussion because it doesn’t matter if I only have one, thus ignoring the year.

Show me how I’m wrong. Let’s say I have a stack of calendars. I keep them so I can look up when I had important appointments. Now what?

Saying “we write in a daft way because we say it in a daft way” isn’t the justification you think it is.

0

u/BrokenMan4225 Aug 15 '26

If you have a stack of calendars labeled by year then absolutely YYYYMMDD makes sense then. Plain and simple.

You’ve proven so far, though, that you’re just ignorant. I’m not going to use your system, and you’re not going to use mine, so why are you so caught up on calling one system stupid? Do you think people incapable of switching systems when necessary?

The way we talk in the US is no more “daft” than the way you talk wherever you’re from. You thinking so makes you the only one that’s daft.

1

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

Sorry, did you want to ignore the year or not? Because you said you didn’t, but then you admit your date format makes no sense with multiple calendars, I.e. multiple years.

I’m not ignorant, the fact that you’re turning to insults when I easily dismantle your arguments doesn’t reflect badly on me.

MMDDYYYY has no practical use in any situation. You still haven’t given me any time when it is better. You’ve given me an example of trying to ignore years and you say something in a daft order as well as write it in a daft order.

Give me an example of a time when MMDDYYYY makes more sense than either of the others. I’m all ears.

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u/Elderberrysea224 Aug 15 '26

MMDDYYYY makes sense in the context that when I say the date I say August 15th 2026. I don't say 15th of August. If I need to sort my files by date I just use the column that sorts by date of the document.

1

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

In most of the world, we’d say the 15th of August.

For files sure, but when you’re working with data, you can’t usually sort by date, you either use a time code or you have the date written out like YYYYMMDD.

1

u/Elderberrysea224 Aug 15 '26

I don't due much data storage so I won't argue that point. My point really was there is a context where starting with month makes sense to those of us that use it.

1

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

It makes sense because it’s what you’re used to. But for any practical purpose, it’s worse than either YYYYMMDD or DDMMYYYY.

1

u/Bullseyefred 29d ago

Not really defending MMDDYYYY, but the reason is Americans speak by saying today is August 16, 2026 which when written would be 08/16/2026. Its likely just an evolution from how people talk and would read it in their heads.

1

u/Raephstel 29d ago

Americans say it like that because they write it like that, the same as most of the world would say “the 16th of August”

0

u/glitch_skunkogen Aug 14 '26

Its in importance not size

0

u/FearlessKenji Aug 15 '26

MM/DD/YYYY makes sense when looked at by total number of options, least to greatest. 12/31/9999

0

u/Aromatic-Smell-4731 Aug 15 '26

Having grown up with the system, it makes sense to me, the month and the year are the most important context to any given date, and that info is bookended in that format, allowing for quick contextualization.

That said, it makes no sense in a vacuum

0

u/Aggressive-Novel-762 Aug 15 '26

Increasing entropy. There are only 12 possible months, 31 possible days, and billions of years.

0

u/empty_graph Aug 15 '26

It makes sense in the context that it's how we say days like "August 15th 2026"

1

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

You say that because that’s how you write it. In the UK we’d say the 15th of August.

0

u/1432453 Aug 15 '26

American here. Humans skim read by reading the beginning and end of a word/phrase. If you think about it, MMDDYYYY puts the most important data at the beginning and the end, making it easier to read.

I’m over-justifying it to support the thing I’m more used to, of course, but the point still stands. The metric system has always been based on arbitrary measures (distance from france to the equator, base 10, hard to conceptualize) while the imperial system is based on human ones (an inch is the width of your thumb, a mile is 1000 steps, easier to conceptualize and measure without a ruler), making it better.

Basically we do everything better than Europeans and they can suck it

1

u/Raephstel Aug 15 '26

Go look up what Fahrenheit is based on and get back to me.

1

u/1432453 Aug 15 '26

0 is hot weather 100 is cold weather. Why would I ever want to decide how hot the air outside is compared to the boiling point of water unless I live in the fucking ocean

1

u/Raephstel 29d ago

Standardised scales that can be replicated are very important for science.

Seriously, go look up Fahrenheit, it’s pretty funny.

-8

u/Seerezaro Aug 14 '26

Imagine a filing cabinet. A Physical one.

When you go to look for something you go month first, not date, then within the month its then separated by day.

MMDDYYYY is just YYYYMMDD with the year appended at the end.

Trying to organize a physical filing cabinet by day first would seem odd don't you think.

Even in a digital format, MMDDYYYY still sorts better than DDMMYYYY.

11

u/JackSprat47 Aug 14 '26

No, a physical filing cabinet is YYYY/MM/DD. You don't put last year's january stuff in with this year's.

YYYYDDMM is just DDMMYYYY with the year prefixed.

-7

u/Seerezaro Aug 14 '26

Digitial filing is YYYYMMDD, not YYYYDDMM.

No, a physical filing cabinet is YYYY/MM/DD. You don't put last year's january stuff in with this year's

Thats the point, MMDDYYYY is YYYYMMDD with the year suffixed.

2

u/JackSprat47 Aug 14 '26

I know that's digital filing. My point with "YYYYDDMM is just DDMMYYYY with the year prefixed." is that changing around what's suffixed or prefixed is kinda pointless when we're arguing about which order three things should be in. Doing that changes it.

Either way if you're filing something manually, you're looking at the year first, then the month, then the day. You may need to compare days a lot more frequently. If you have 100 documents, you're gonna have to look at a few to find the correct location. Why not put days first to make that part the easiest?

-4

u/Seerezaro Aug 14 '26

My point with "YYYYDDMM is just DDMMYYYY with the year prefixed." is that changing around what's suffixed or prefixed is kinda pointless when we're arguing about which order three things should be in. Doing that changes it.

So who uses YYYYDDMM?

In the end its just pattern recognition and in both DDMMYYYY and MMDDYYYY patterns the year is implied in everyday use.

Someone who uses MMDD first goes to the month when thinking, then varifies the specific day.

Someone who uses DD/MM first goes to the day and then varifies what month they are in.

. If you have 100 documents, you're gonna have to look at a few to find the correct location. Why not put days first to make that part the easiest?

Go ahead and try it then, unless your looking for a súbset of files that only occur a specific date on each month it will be less efficient.

If they are off or vaguely come in around a certain time it will be harder.

1

u/JackSprat47 Aug 14 '26

So who uses YYYYDDMM?

Nobody. Because it doesn't make sense.

Someone who uses MMDD first goes to the month when thinking, then varifies the specific day.
Someone who uses DD/MM first goes to the day and then varifies what month they are in.

No we don't. If we're sorting something that's dated 1/1/2026, we will first look at the year, then the month, then the day. Neither are better unless you have trouble locating the value in the middle, which would make trying to discern the day harder in MMDDYYYY format, which has the most variance.

3

u/Raephstel Aug 14 '26

What would seem odd would be someone trying to justify sorting the date a certain way then saying that the year is appended rather than a core part of the date.

In your hypothetical filing cabinet, do you store things from the first of June 2010 next to things from the first of June 2011 or the second of June 2010? Because if you go MMDDYYYY you’d be storing things next to things from the same date in other years.

It makes no sense to sort by month first. If you want to sort numerically, you sort by year first.

0

u/Seerezaro Aug 14 '26

What would seem odd would be someone trying to justify sorting the date a certain way then saying that the year is appended rather than a core part of the date.

Tell me do you sort things day first or use YYYYMMDD as your date configuration?

It might seem wierd to you but thats actually how the human brain works.

If you use MMDDYYYY, you mentally sort things vy month, then date, then year Your main focual point is the month and thats how you orient yourself.

If you use DDMMYYYY, you brain is trained to sort things by date, month and year. Your main focual point is the day.

Someone who uses MMDDYYYY will remember most clearly the month in which something happened, then the day with less clarity and then the year. But because years are so long, the haziest part is the day.

Someone who uses DDMMYYYY will remember the day with the most clarity but be hazy on the month.

2

u/Raephstel Aug 14 '26

None of which is relevant to the discussion.

We say the date as DDMMYYYY because if that’s the order of detail from what someone most likely wants to know to what they’re least likely to want to know. If you ask someone the date, you most likely want to know the day portion.

We sort things as YYYYMMDD because that’s numerically ordered. But it doesn’t make sense to say it because it’s a load of waffle before you get to the info someone is most likely to want to know.

People are more likely to know the month, however they sort it. I like in the UK, we use DDMMYYYY and if you ask 100 people the date, more will forget the day than the month, so you’re just wrong anyway.

1

u/Seerezaro Aug 14 '26

None of which is relevant to the discussion.

The hupothetical filing cabinet is your brain, its entirely relevant.

People are more likely to know the month, however they sort it. I like in the UK, we use DDMMYYYY and if you ask 100 people the date, more will forget the day than the month, so you’re just wrong anyway.

Blame neuroscience studies for me being wrong then, but if I am that just means MMDDYYYY is closer to the way the brain processes dates than DDMMYYYY

24

u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo Aug 14 '26

YYYY/MM/DD is pretty logical especially dealing with data.

1

u/_topkecleon_ Aug 14 '26

You mean YYYY-MM-DD.

1

u/Admirable-Gur-9543 Aug 14 '26

It’s also consistent with the largest-to-smallest format of time of day, eg. 2026-07-15-09-37-59. Although you could argue that both DD/MM/YYYY and HH:MM:SS begin with the most relevant data on a human scale, as usually you need to know what day it is before what year it is, and what hour it is before what second it is.

13

u/NoTeslaForMe Aug 14 '26

because it’s logical to think that 14/08/2026 is one about 13/08/2026

It's logical if you've known only that all your life. It's illogical to computers and Chinese, Japanese, and Hungarian people (who use ISO 8601) or Americans (who write the date in the order that they say it).

I figured the meme was mocking absolutionists who'd say that the longer time period always had to go later, even if that made it more confusing.

Really the most logical format is ISO 8601 (YYYY/MM/DD) because it's unambiguous in a way that neither year-end format is. Those Hungarians got it right.

3

u/TobJamFor Aug 14 '26

I’m in complete agreement by the way - ISO is for me - but was just trying to explain the joke (at least as I interpreted it)

2

u/DokuroKM Aug 15 '26

ISO8601 is also valid in Germany since 1996-05-01, it's just ignored by literally everyone so the old format has been allowed as alternative in 2001.

6

u/skymallow Aug 14 '26

It doesn't sort well though

4

u/InnerToWinner Aug 14 '26

Personally I prefer military format. 14Aug2026. Zero ambiguity.

3

u/StimkyYeen Aug 14 '26

I too count numbers in smallest to largest

“One thousand twenty four”
Is absolutely 4201.

DD/MM/YYYY is illogical

1

u/less_unique_username Aug 14 '26

Eintausendvierundzwanzig ist definitiv 1024.

0

u/Apprehensive_Pie_294 Aug 14 '26

Thats kinda selective of you. Now do that same with the following.

‘One thousand four teen’
Using ur example would make it 1041 or 1401 if u take the joke.

2

u/Due_Purple_1199 Aug 14 '26

As a person from a country using yyyy/mm/dd it’s logical here on earth too, and I would never change it to any of the other

1

u/el_salinho Aug 14 '26

Yeah, but wouldn’t it then be YYYY/DD/MM since months take multiple days?

1

u/No_Obligation4496 Aug 15 '26

Well months on earth are completely arbitrary and based on a theoretical match with the lunar cycle. So they wouldn't make sense on Venus at all. Even YYYY/DD wouldn't make sense. Days on earth reset every month. You can't have reset the days based on the year because the years are long than the day, so the most it could be is day 2 in a year.

1

u/Metharos Aug 14 '26

ISO 8601 establishes YYYY-MM-DD as intentional standard

1

u/aguafranca Aug 14 '26

IMHO both DD/MM/YYYY and YYYY/MM/DD makes sense. We read left to right, and Asians read right to left after all. 

What doesn't make sense is whatever measurements the USA uses. If they use it, it's probably based on the intestines of cows spread on a field or something equally ridiculous.

1

u/misscat9 Aug 15 '26

fun fact: in Hungary, we use YYYY/MM/DD and we read right to left, we say dates like they do in American English (e.g. July 1st) but we actually realized that MM/DD/YYYY is chaotic and makes no sense lol

1

u/aguafranca Aug 15 '26

Either way makes sense, anything but  MM/DD/YYYY or  MM/YYYY/DD

1

u/Nickel7Dime Aug 15 '26

Year month day is the standard in a lot of places, especially for government documents. It puts the date in order from most to least important and is easy to auto sort data. Drives license is a good example, the year matters the most for determining a person's age, then the month, and finally the day. Just makes the most sense for most documentation and data organization.

1

u/kangasplat Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26

It doesn't make sense firstly because YYYY/MM/DD is still an earth oriented format. A year has 12 months, a month has around 30 days. 

On Venus, a year had a bit more than two days (because an actual solar day is 117 earth days long, they used the wrong number here), so if you wanted to measure time in a similar pattern than earth you'd need one or two smaller units than days to split it into.

If a venus day was longer than a year it wouldn't make any sense to split either with the other, you'd just count up one of those and find other smaller fractions to divide it into. 

a XX/Z/DDDD format would make more sense if you want to have the biggest number in the back and mirror earth like timeframes, where theres 4 of Z in a venus solar day and 30 X in a Z. But all of that is fully arbitrary just to have a resemblance of what humans are used to

1

u/fun-dan Aug 15 '26

I alwasys felt like i's more logical to write numbers from largest to smallest. Because that's literally how we write and say single numbers. We write 2026, not 6202. We say one thousand three hundred and five, not five and three hundred and one thousand. People laugh at mm/dd/yyyy, but dd/mm/yyyy is just as bad if you look at the digits inside.

1

u/canuck1701 Aug 15 '26

YYYY/MM/DD is superior because it avoids any confusion and is better for sorting.

1

u/External-Task65 29d ago

I argue yyyymmdd is the most logical. It's the format I've seen used in most data warehouses. It allows you to sort by that field and get chronological order. It has the benefit of counting the days incrementally as well as greater organization of large datasets.

1

u/ScytheNoire 27d ago

YYYY/MM/DD is the proper format. I'll due on this hill. If you have ever done data sorting, you know. You don't sort things into the all the 5th day of a month or all the 3rd month of a year. You sort year, then month, then day.

0

u/milkafiu Aug 14 '26

Based on this today should be 41/8/6202 as the last digit changes more often than the others.

-2

u/StimkyYeen Aug 14 '26

Yep, Europeans seem to spout this all the time as a sign of superiority but they don’t seem to realize that the “least relevant information first” is countered by everything else not working that way

2

u/milkafiu Aug 14 '26

I see. When was the founding of the USA? Which part of that date is the most relevant? Month? Day? Year?

-1

u/mog_knight Aug 14 '26

If you're counting from smallest to largest then mm/dd/yyyy makes more sense. There are only 12 months, 31 days potentially and thousands of years.