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Comment by yanateras | Hacker News Reader

The other way around! Today a few services that don't congratulate me on my birthday (on non-leap years) did. I was born on February 29th.

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How often do you encounter challenges related to your birthday? Meaning, not just on the day of Feb 29, but any day of the year when you're trying to select your birth date or something like that. Do you ever find forms where the date is missing or the backend wont accept it?

Occasionally, but less often than one could imagine! About a dozen times in my life.

Whenever February 29 wasn’t present as an option, the frontend was at fault, so I could set the right <input> value in the inspector as a workaround.

Other times February 29 was present as an option, only to be saved as February 28. Never March 1, which I’d say would be more coherent.

> more coherent

depends on what you're trying to organize by. maybe 'birth month' is an important signifier.

Here’s why:

* I was N years old on February 28th this year

* I will be N+1 years old on March 1st this year

Therefore:

* I was N-1 years old on February 28th last year

* I was N years old on March 1st last year

Perhaps the month is February and the non-leap year date is March 1st...

If it makes you feel better.... On February 29, 2008 I was working on a system as a government contractor. Part of it was outsourced to a sub-contractor who decided to write their own date/time library because how hard could that be (which I only learned about later)? For some reason NOTHING would work right that day. Took me longer than I'd care to admit of staring at the logs to realize that some started with March 1 2008....

edit: also happy birthday!

Definitely not any more coherent on a leap year! That remark only applied to dates stored without a year, as in “February 29” rather than “February 29, 2008”.

Thank you..!

Happy birthday to you! It’s a special day and We don’t get this chance to say this often. Enjoy your day

Thank you :3

Were you born on the day after Feb 28 or the day before Mar 1? ;)

Yes

Happy birthday!

Thank you ^_~

https://www.askamanager.org/2018/01/i-paid-for-fake-referenc...

You're not alone!

Stay, yanateres, stay! They have no legal claim! No shadow of a shame will fall upon thy name: stay, yanateres, stay!

...it occurs to me, when should those services congratulate you? Should it be on February 28 or March 1?

According to the government, Mar 1. Anything that is based on your birthday (driver's license, drinking, signing contracts, etc) all happen on March 1 if there is no Feb 29 that year.

Which makes sense since then it is "after" your birthday.

365 days ago was March 1, 2023

In 365 days, it will be February 28, 2025

Which is more important, the past or the future?

This year has 366 days, or at least it does after Feb 29.

I’d say March 1! February 28 might be too early.

At midnight in-between 28th February and 1st March.

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