ISO 8601
The perfect date
Submitted 5 hours ago by PopcornPrincess@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5ab2dd41-bf06-4a03-8c7e-dd3ac3c57563.jpeg
Comments
red_tomato@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
As for why it’s better:
- It’s in sort order. Even if you use it for things that don’t understand dates, they sort properly because the day is the last part, month is the middle part, and year is the first part. If you include hours, minutes or seconds, the sort order is still preserved.
- Speaking of things that don’t understand dates, because there are no slashes, you can easily use it in file names, directories, and anything else that treats slash as a special character. In addition, if you include the time part, because it uses “T” to separate the date and time, it doesn’t use a space, so once again it can be easily used anywhere where a space might cause issues.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 24 minutes ago
To be fair, the time separators don’t behave well on all implementations of filesystem access by filename. Need to use underscores or omit them at times.
trainsrkool@lemmy.ml 1 hour ago
💯
TootSweet@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
This is the way.
davidagain@lemmy.world 14 minutes ago
This is the way.
mkwt@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
ISO would be great, but sadly OmegaStar doesn’t support ISO timestamps yet.
BigDiction@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
It’s great, and standard for software. But do any of y’all communicate dates like this in your personal life?
Like “want to go to a hockey game with me 2026-10-17?” Like as cursed as mm-dd-yy is, it feels a lot more natural in conversation.
dantel@programming.dev 4 hours ago
Say when is that independence day of yours?
There is nothing ‘natural’ about mm/dd/yy, it is just what you are used to - end of story.
bitchkat@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I absolutely full out dates in iso 8601 any time I’m required to sign a form.
Quokka@quokk.au 4 hours ago
dd-mm feels completely natural to say in conversation. “Do you want to go to a X with me on the 3rd of August”
Dookieman12@piefed.social 2 hours ago
There’s no reason the two need to be the same. We don’t talk in heximal either
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
Yes, kind of.
I shorthand it verbally unless I’m giving a full date, but typed, it’s almost always yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss (whichever part of that is relevant).
I do this because I believe it’s the most logical, it sorts properly without having to use a datetime library, and it can’t be confused with another system (is 12-1-2026 in the future or the past? No way to know just by looking at it).
Just shortening it to MM-dd could cause confusion with anyone not in the US so I’ll typically include the year as well (also useful if I wind up having to look at old notes or emails to not have to figure out the year I meant … Which has happened more than once …)
lividweasel@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Only a truly insane person would use mm-dd-yy in conversation. “Want to go to a hockey game with me ten seventeen twenty-six?” Or worse, “…oh four oh seven twenty-seven.” Pure madness.
Conversationally, mmm d yy or d mmm yy (usually just shortened to mmm d or d mmm) is where it’s at.
trem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
RFC 3339
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 hours ago
Except I can’t get behind the time part of it, personally. I can see the point of doing GMT with the offset if you’re working across multiple timezones, but it’s overkill for situations where you aren’t.
Dookieman12@piefed.social 2 hours ago
There’s no way to predict how a date will be used. No reason not to be flexible. No reason to break convention.
Eq0@literature.cafe 3 hours ago
That’s how my brother missed a train: the linux planner used GMT while the local train company planner used assumed local time…
CannedYeet@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Yeah, the time part should obviously be written in Swatch Internet Time, he writes at @910.
drath@lemmy.drath.ru 1 hour ago
Months are stupid anyway, lets drop them and swap for what they were supposed to represent instead: the moon phase, so today would be 216-2026-Waning Gibbous
Zikeji@programming.dev 4 hours ago
I read this meme and was physically revolted and wanted to immediately down vote. Great job.
The superior date format is, of course, ISO 8601. YYYY-MM-DD.
dan@upvote.au 3 hours ago
RFC3339 is better than ISO8601 since it doesn’t allow some of the esoteric formats, and allows some useful formats that ISO8601 doesn’t (like separating date and time by a space instead of by
T)
gex@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
yyyy/mm/dd, it’s less ambiguous and it sorts nicely
Carl@anarchist.nexus 3 hours ago
Beat me to it, except I’d do yyyy-mm-dd because some OSes throw fits about having slashes in file names. Way better than the “Group Project-final FINAL v3 PAUL USE THIS ONE.file” versioning system that people seem to use.
Bahnd@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
HISSSSSS.
switch the slashes to dashes
[Angry ISO-8601 noises]
whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
1785793853 seconds since Linux epoch
chickenf622@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
ISO 8601 (yyyy-mm-dd) for storing dates in software. Any format that that goes in the order of day, month, and year for conversational/presentational purposes, preferable the format is dynamic depending on the user’s locale (even for those that want the month first). There now everyone is happy.
dan@upvote.au 3 hours ago
RFC3339 is better than ISO8601 since it doesn’t allow some of the esoteric formats, and allows some useful formats that ISO8601 doesn’t (like separating date and time by a space instead of by
T)chickenf622@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Damn it I forgot about the duration part of ISO 8601 (which is also super useful and I love it). I’ll amend it to RFC 3339 to be more exact in what I mean (even though the specified format should prevent the more esoteric formats).
procrastitron@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Anyone who wants to write the millennium between the month and century loses all credibility when arguing about date formats.
YYYY-MM-DD is the only coherent date format.
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 3 hours ago
write the millennium between the month and century
That took me a minute to parse, but now I like it.
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 2 hours ago
53 comments and I’m the first effusive nerd to bring up unix epoch? Nothing happened before 0 (1970-01-01 00:00:00) anyway.
blackbeans@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
Epoch is signed though, that 1970 date is the midpoint
dlsloop@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
I’m a YYYY/MM/DD man myself
Bahnd@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
[ISO-8601 MAN SWOOPS IN FROM THE SKY]
You are close, work on your punctuation, see me after class
[Dramatic super hero exit]
dlsloop@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
Wow, I was really not expecting us to get this far into the weeds in this thread but I suppose I should have lol
Grostleton@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
I prefer ddd/yyyy, much simpler
fartsparkles@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Ah yes, Mon/2026, perfect…
Baizey@feddit.dk 4 hours ago
Gives you (up to) 52 shots at any plans, perfect
adarza@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago
%j/%Y
even simpler, it’s all numbers.
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
April 25th.
We’ve already established this.
Because it’s not too hot and not too cold. All you need is a light jacket.
Dave@lemmy.nz 12 minutes ago
I can tell I’m on Lemmy because of how many ISO 8601 comments I had to scroll past to find this comment.
OttoVonNoob@lemmy.ca 4 hours ago
Apparently im a freak who is MM/DD/YEAR.
Baizey@feddit.dk 4 hours ago
Also known as an American™️
death_to_carrots@feddit.org 4 hours ago
Yes, you are and you should feel shame about you.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 hours ago
I think it’s better than day month year but both are worse than year month day.
Paradachshund@lemmy.today 3 hours ago
While it’s confusing in a vacuum, it’s also just the way we say it out loud in american English (April 20, 2026), so it’s not that weird when you think about it like that.
davidagain@lemmy.world 4 minutes ago
That’s MMM d yyyy, not mm dd yyyy. It removes the ambiguity but also removes the sortability. yyyy-mm-dd for the win.
blackbeans@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
However for countries that adopt dd-mm-yyyy, it’s also completely natural to say it out loud in that way (20 April 2026). So by that reasoning we will never end up with a universally accepted date format.
My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
YYYYYMMDD
I prefer to think we’re in the year 12026, since homo sapiens really got things going around 10,000 BCE.
Olmai@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Im more of a Medjool guy myself. Not sure what everyone else is talking about.
hakunawazo@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
henfredemars@infosec.pub 4 hours ago
3 Aug 2026
You can’t guess wrong.
blackbeans@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
The Spanish would write Ago
The French would write Août
The Greek would write Αυγ
Arabic speaking would write أغسطس
Using words doesn’t seem as universal as numbers.
eestileib@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
That’s a path I can’t walk buddy, I think it’s better we end it here before we get too attached.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 hours ago
February 23.
Because it’s muh birfday 😋
TheImpressiveX@lemmy.today 2 hours ago
@RemindMe@mstdn.social pm 2027-02-23
pewpew@feddit.it 4 hours ago
Correct opinion.
Pudutr0n@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
it’s like looking into a mirror
EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
DD MON YEAR is the only one that’s not ambiguous on November tenth and the like. 10 Nov 2022 is less confusing than either 11/10/2022 or 10/11/2022 and is without a doubt never confusing.
davidagain@lemmy.world 2 minutes ago
yyyy-mm-dd is an international standard. It’s better because it’s sortable.
M137@lemmy.today 32 minutes ago
ITT: people saying one thing is better than any other without thinking of context.
If I want to know today’s date ISO 8601 isn’t a good answer. And if I put stuff in folders by date then DD-MM-YYYY is a real bad way to do it. But MM-DD-YYYY is the worst one no matter the context.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 27 minutes ago
Can be tailed to the relevant bit though.