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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

Good list, and interesting how at least half of the points are about localisation/internationalization. The date point was good I find that one very annoying. The easiest way to work it out on forums is usually to look at the previous post and see what number goes down (day).

I didn't realise the mm/dd format was only officially used in two countries. I've never understood why it's use at all, it makes much more sense going from day-month-year. Is there a reason mm/dd was chosen in the US and Belize?

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As with most internationalization problems, blame the British. We used this middle-endian format around the time we colonised North America (I guess it does kind of make sense when you're reading aloud). The USA standardised on it, whereas most of the rest of the world (including Britain) moved on to a more logical format.

See also: power plugs. The British came up with a new British Standard plug seemingly every few years, and all the places we colonised use a different British Standard. We are the reason you need to spend $20 on a universal power adapter with 10 different attachments.

Indeed. Even going 50 years back, we had different plugs for different parts of the UK. I remember my grandmother plugging stuff into her light fitting as well with an adapter. I'm sure stuff caught fire a lot then.

Regarding dates, I think yyyy-mm-dd makes sense (big endian dates) as you can sort naturally.

I switched to yyyy-mm-dd for almost all my own records shortly after I learned about it when I started using Linux in 1996. Having any consistent format helps in searching, and as you pointed out this is the simplest to sort.

We also pioneered colonialisation, plundering and killing the natives. The US was a good student and has now become the master.

I prefer year-month-day. This extends logically into time, and plays well with regular math. Except for switching base every digit.

Also, this is an ISO standard (ISO 8601).

Switching base every digit is fun. Before Britain made their currency dull, some LEO and ICT (later ICL) computers did £sd arithmetic in hardware.

> Is there a reason mm/dd was chosen in the US

I don't know which came first, but it agrees with the way we say it out loud. "Today is September tenth." So, maybe that's why?

And I think in other countries, it's said the other way around, right? "Today is the tenth of September?" That would actually be okay sounding in the U.S., too, though a little uncommon. Can you say "Today is tenth September"? That sounds very weird to me.

September the Tenth, or Tenth of September.

Both read well, and when we use shorthand we use a "/" in place of the/of.

It makes more sense to order consistently by unit. So day < month < year

month > day < year seems a bit silly.

I agree it's a silly ordering. What dialect of English do you speak?

> September the Tenth

Even this sounds a little funny to my ears. In American English people say almost exclusively "September Tenth" in that order without any prepositions.

I concur. At least if the person is not saying something along the lines of

"On this date, the 10th of September, Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twelve..."

> In American English people say almost exclusively

As an Australian living in North America for seven years, my ears still daily pickup when the American dialect leaves out words.

Examples that come to mind: "Two hundred three", "Write me", "September tenth"

> "Two hundred three"

I'd be curious to hear you elaborate on this one. In American school, I learned that 'two hundred three' is the only acceptable version, but in casual speech people invariably say 'two hundred and three', which sounds more natural.

Which one do you say?

At least Australia and the UK correctly ( ;P ) use "two hundred and three".

There's a wealth of differences between British and American english: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_Bri... (Of particular relevance here is the numbers section.)

> In American English people say almost exclusively "September Tenth" in that order without any prepositions.

Possibly regional, but I hear people say 10th of September quite often on the US West Coast. I would guess it has to do with the way we talk about the date... days in the future seem to follow the mm dd format while talking about the current date seems to follow dd of mm.

I agree, but I think d/m/y is _equally_ silly.

YMD is clearly the thinking person's choice. It's the one that naturally sorts in lexicographic order, and also naturally extends to YMDHMS.

In Dutch we say: 'ten september' (also, we don't capitalize names of the month, see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Capitalization#Capitalization...)

I usually say "Today is the 10th/tenth of September".

> And I think in other countries, it's said the other way around, right? "Today is the tenth of September?" That would actually be okay sounding in the U.S., too, though a little uncommon. Can you say "Today is tenth September"? That sounds very weird to me.

You mean in english? Because in portuguese we use cardinals to refer to days, and not ordinals. "Dez de setembro de 2012"—literally: "Ten of September of 2012." I'd guess it's the same in spanish.

Interestingly someone had the foresight to use dd/mm on the US customs and immigration forms handed out to arriving visitors. I guess then only visitors from Belize are likely to get caught out :-)

Does this practice extend to other official forms?

I think there should be a distinction made in this discussion between the technical use of dates for the purpose of storage, and display of dates for the end user.

Why don't we display dates as seconds since epoch? Because people don't recognize that format.

For technical purposes, use a date format with technical advantages (YYYYMMDD). For displaying the date for the user, format it so people can understand it (ex. January 10th, 2013) - and localize it if you have that information, or allow customization, or it all else fails, provide and explanation.

As long as it's ascending or descending in colloquial use, it's not a problem. The mess happens when the date is listed as mm/dd/yy.

If you're doing timestamps, it should be yy/mm/dd, because that then feeds into the continuation of the descent into hh/mm/ss

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