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Comment by perilunar | Hacker News Reader

3/29/18? What sort of date format is that?

Regardless of your stack, use ISO 8601 for dates.

That's the third of Thunderfiretober of 2018, what's your problem, isn't that clear? ;)

Playing devil's advocate here. This kind of date formatting is really confusing to me (German) and I almost overread that the question asked for the current en vogue tech...

> This kind of date formatting is really confusing to me

You, me, and most of the world outside the USA. Check out the map here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country

That's one of the most common date formats used in the United States.

Are you suggesting to use ISO 8601 format to display dates to users instead of the users local or preferred format?

Yes. This site, like many, has a large international audience. Don't assume your local (and illogical) format is your users'. It just confuses people. Use an unambiguous format: use 8601 or spell out the month.

That's my point exactly. It's an international audience but it's also an informal social environment where we can't expect everybody to be cognizant of that fact at every moment and make adjustments for it.

As such, you shouldn't be too strict about what you feel is the "logical" way of doing things.

Anyway, according to alexa, the great majority of HN readers are from the US - https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ycombinator.com

> the great majority of HN readers are from the US

57.5% is not a 'great majority'. It's only slightly more than half!

> we can't expect everybody to be cognizant of that fact

That's why I remind people. Use international standards/formats and be less insular. (And FFS, go metric ;)

57% is the greatest number on that chart. I didn’t see any other number past say 9% if I remember correctly. (It was actually 6%.) That’s the great majority.

Yes, be less insular too... however please try to do it in a non-snarky way that won’t provoke the other human beings.

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