I’m sorry but it doesn’t make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught, regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in, if at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of said month. After you know that, you can find out the month to know where you are in the year.
What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
EDIT: To avoid misunderstandings:
- I am NOT making fun OF ANYONE.
- I am NOT negatively judging ANYTHING.
- I am totally open to being corrected and LEARN.
- This post is out of pure and honest CURIOSITY.
So PLEASE, don’t take it the wrong way.
Because the month is bigger and provides more context on it’s own. You figure out the month first then place yourself within that scale.
Example:
“It’s May (immediately tells us the context of 31days, spring, etc.) It is the 30th, so there’s one day left in May”
Vs
“It’s the 30th (provides no context except that it’s not February). it’s may, so there’s one day left in May”
So both lead to the same conclusion, the first way just gives the limiting parameter/most context first.
Similar reasoning why the month is the primary separation on calendars.
Another example that follow this same principle, you tell time HH/mm to provide the larger context first, not mm/HH.
Surprised I had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the comments to find this answer
you tell time HH/mm to provide the larger context first, not mm/HH.
Except not everywhere does, at least in speech. Half past ten. Quarter to eight. Five past three.
Although in the US I suppose you do say ten thirty, and seven forty-five? So at least you are consistent!
The short answer is, it’s what we were taught in school. Like many preferences, it’s shaped by the culture we grow up and live in.
I’m sorry but it doesn’t make sense to me.
Of course not, you were raised and live in a different culture; so, your preferences are different.
Ultimately, the right answer is ISO8601. It’s unambiguous and sorts well on computers. But, I don’t think any culture is teaching that as the primary way to write dates, so we’re stuck with the crappy ways.
YYYYMMDD is commonly used throughout East Asia.
There is an American subculture teaching and using ISO 8601; the US military. They don’t call it that, but I learned later that’s what it is. They enforce YYYY-MM-DD on all documents.
Because the day doesn’t matter when you work every day between your three jobs that won’t give you 40 hours in order to not give you health insurance.
That escalated quickly…
Idk, maybe like all U.Sians traditions, this was an Old-World British thing Americans preserved, since it’s a more direct term of the English language, more direct than Day then Month
so unless it’s a special day, if not holiday, for U.Sians like 4th of July, by default, Month then Day
Hello, have you heard the good word of our lord, ISO-8601?
That’s the correct way.
Probably because in english it’s the way they speak about dates (and the fact US kinda isolated themselves before WWII).
They started to write dates as they speak dates.
Sounds plausible
Ignoring the coding side of things…
It’s relative. And also works easier to navigate the calendar. If we’re planning something for next year I pull up next year’s calendar. If it’s this years and we’re planning something for later this year, when I hear you say August, that’s the month I go to. But if you say the 27th of August, The first thing I heard was the 27th which could possibly be this month or next month if it’s say the 28th today.
If you name your files YEAR-MONTH-DAY_Filename they be in chronological order when sorted by the name field.
That’s not a good explanation for the question, because the convention was established before computers.
I mean it’s easier to sort like that for humans too.
I don’t think that’s true; before computers people would get used to one way or another and it would have 0 impact on their ability to compare.
When you are searching for a file in a filing cabinet of a finance department, it’d be a nightmare if records were filed by month first and year after.
I answered the one question he posed. What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
It sorts by what seems to me historically by relevance, i.e. which day is asked more often because it seems a more frequent timeframe for everyday use in a medieval society compared to the month (with the seasons as something in between those two).
And I agree that since the digital age yyyy-mm–dd has significant advantages!
YYYYMMDD is the only correct answer.
I don’t know, that’s just how I learned it in school so it feels natural for me to use/say.
This post kinda stinks of “why doesn’t the US just switch to metric? Are they stupid?”
Not switching to metric is stupid. Fighting for independence from the empire, but then clinging to the imperial system that has only disadvantages over the metric system - that just screams not driven by reason
Sorry if it gives that impression, it is not at all my intention, it is pure and honest curiosity. That’s why I avoided any bad word and put it in a subjective point of view (“I think / I believe”)
I can’t say it matters to me that much what order it’s in, but that’s just the same order we say it in when fully written out. March 23, 2025. 03/23/2025.
Maybe it’s a language specific thing? In my native tongue March 23 sounds like a journal entry, not a normal date.
Not an American. But I’ve heard the same explanation. And it does make sense to me.
However, why do Americans say “Fourth of July” then?
Because its a holiday
Forth of July is a forced special case that we USians have been conditioned into differentiating. Strange shit like that due to nationalism. We don’t do that for most other dates or holidays, though. Like, hardly anyone goes around routinely saying 31st of October to refer to that holiday.
Maybe the UK equivalent would be the 5th of November. (Or was that just popularized because of V For Vendetta?)
I suppose I’ve heard the Ides of March plenty, as well.
The 5th of November is Guy Fawkes Night in the UK: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night
Guy gets laid night
You already answered your own question, bud.
it doesn’t make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught
Why do you think other people are different than you?
I’m just curious… Is that a crime?
It’s not just Americans. There are many countries in Asia where the default is year month day. If you ever had to organize files by name and date this is the supreme sorting order. Both Europe and North America are getting it wrong.
If this gets you mad don’t ever look into how the French count from 80 to 99. Or how languages disagree on what’s blue or green. These things happen.
I know about the Asians. I work in a Chinese run company and we use WeChat for internal communications. When I have to search for a message from a specific date I always get confused by the way the dates are displayed.
As an American it was just what we were taught. However, when I started creating code and being pedantic about organizing files by date, I now prefer YYYYMMDD format as it is, chronologically speaking, superior when prefacing files with it. In this case, in my opinion, it’s better to have the year and then month first prior to day.
To each their own, variety is the spice of life.
What you say is interesting. Having a way of organizing time that suits your needs. That’s why I asked if there was any benefit in the way Americans (and apparently also Chinese) represent time.
Interesting thing about how Chinese time is organized is locations are also stated big to small. Last names then first names etc.
Locations have a last name and a first name in Chinese?
I mean the larger family name comes before the personal name. Implying a connection between number, place, and naming sequences
Chinese is also weird imho. If I remember correctly, they put the details of an action first in a sentece and the verb that defines the action itself goes last with some exceptions.
Hungarian comes to my mind which is similar and always follows the context first, details later rule. They use “yyyy.mm.dd.”, “family name first, given name last”, “country, city, street, street number order for locations”, and the word order of their grammar is similar too, details are always at the end of the sentence.
China’s first name is actually Jim, believe it or not.
This is the only format that truly makes sense, as it is both unambiguous and, as you noted, sortable.
ISO is my true north.
Am American and I hate the MM/DD/YY(YY) format. Unfortunately its what’s been taught and used as the standard date format for a long time.
I much prefer the ISO standard of YYYY-MM-DD. It’s the superior format logically moving from the largest calendar unit to the smallest. Also superior for date ordering files.
Yeah, I resently saw it and I agree with you.
Why, when you want to know the time, do you read the hours first then the minutes? Why not just read the minutes and then figure out the hour you’re in?
Convenience…? Is it more convenient to know the month first and the day second? (That’s literally what I’m just asking! No shade! No judge! Only curiosity!)
