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Comment by aycangulez | Hacker News Reader

It occured to me that having the month before the day is the most practical solution because the most important piece in a date is the month as years change only every 365 days or so, and a day gains meaning only when associated with a month. In other words, the month, being the most salient piece comes first.

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I disagree that the most important information is the month — it really depends on context.

Most dates I work with are near the present day. Scheduling something next week, referring to last week. Very rarely do I exceed the current month unless I am near a month boundary. The current month is nearly always known information.

In this case, the day is the first piece of information I look for (and almost always when I want to know today's date, all I am really asking for is "what day of the month are we on today?").

That seems a bit contrived. Whether the month is most salient depends on the context.

And (as a European) I'm constantly amazed by how weird and confusing it is to put the middle-level information up front. If there were different separators (e.g. if today were 12,16/2013) I think I'd struggle less.

Get your logic out of here. We're hating on America.

What about timestamps from that logic ? I think there, hour is the most important datum, then month, then day, as you state it. Minutes come after that. Year is not that relevant, and seconds are very secondary. So, my comment is written at 11-12-16:59-2013:10 GMT+1. Not very readable for sure, but much more practical ;)

I couldn't have said it better myself. I moved to Australia a while back, and I find trying to scan dates on Australian sites infuriating, especially for apartment listings.

11/02/13 12/03/13 15/02/13 14/03/13

So disappointing when you realize the apartment isn't available until next month.

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