Comment on Tomorrow...
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 5 days agoYou’re using the word “significant” in a colloquial/informal way, but in terms of the strict mathematical definition, most significant digits to least significant is about the size of the unit. If you were to create a dial system, the most significant digits move the slowest and the least significant digits move the fastest.
So ISO 8601 properly orders it left to right, largest to smallest, without exceptions. It can be truncated for lower precision, like how 2026-09-14T20:15:35 takes place in a particular year (2026), or a particular calendar month (2026-09) or a particular day (2026-09-14).
It’s the best format and everyone should use it.
VonReposti@feddit.dk 5 days ago
Yeah, significant bit in my explanation shouldn’t be confused for endianness, that works like you explained. But I’m still of the opinion that iso8601 is best saved for when you need to save dates/datetimes or when confusion can occur. Human-to-human communication is more often than not informal and redundant information can be left out more often and that is where the significance of the bits comes in. Maybe I should have called it the importance of the parts to avoid confusion.
But save to say, I use iso8601 most often anyway. Who is communicating with other humans nowadays?