How was your week?

[kiloran]

When working at my employer to define a new global software system, we decided on ddmmmyy (27Jan24) as the date format to be displayed on screens and printouts. Worked globally (americas, europe, asia) with no confusion, and became the standard in spreadsheets etc. Excel interprets it as a date, it's sortable in a spreadsheet. I've used it ever since in everything I do

--kiloran

True... it works
But the one true correct answer is YYYYMMDD(HHmmSS)
Cos it works in a sort even if all you have is alphanumeric parsing

Yes, that works on a technical level. but the main interface with users was a 24x80 terminal screen rather than a spreadsheet. Users from all countries felt that yyyymmdd failed the user-friendliness test, when looking at a date they would have to think what it really meant, and with a lot of dates on the screens, they felt ddmmmyy was far more intuitive. 28JAN24 was much more intuitive and instantly recognisable than 20240128, even for those whose native language was not english. The screen layout was very much led by users.

--kiloran
edit.... and 28JAN24 also used less screen space than 20240128, we wanted to cram as much useful info on each screen as possible

[Dod101]

When working at my employer to define a new global software system, we decided on ddmmmyy (27Jan24) as the date format to be displayed on screens and printouts. Worked globally (americas, europe, asia) with no confusion, and became the standard in spreadsheets etc. Excel interprets it as a date, it's sortable in a spreadsheet. I've used it ever since in everything I do

--kiloran

True... it works
But the one true correct answer is YYYYMMDD(HHmmSS)
Cos it works in a sort even if all you have is alphanumeric parsing

Not that it has much to do with the subject, but in the end you are doing this for users, not for the benefit of programmers, or what somebody has deemed as 'correct'.

Dod

[servodude]

True... it works
But the one true correct answer is YYYYMMDD(HHmmSS)
Cos it works in a sort even if all you have is alphanumeric parsing

Yes, that works on a technical level. but the main interface with users was a 24x80 terminal screen rather than a spreadsheet. Users from all countries felt that yyyymmdd failed the user-friendliness test, when looking at a date they would have to think what it really meant, and with a lot of dates on the screens, they felt ddmmmyy was far more intuitive. 28JAN24 was much more intuitive and instantly recognisable than 20240128, even for those whose native language was not english. The screen layout was very much led by users.

--kiloran
edit.... and 28JAN24 also used less screen space than 20240128, we wanted to cram as much useful info on each screen as possible

Well done for not dropping off the century
I picked up that date habit writing dBase (FoxPro/Recital) stuff for the chief execs of the Scottish education department as a teenager at uni. It stuck - firstly because it makes sense (and I take your point about screen space, I did A LOT of terminal forms) and also as it "kind of always" worked between all the loosely related database formats without having to translate it (you just enforced numeric input).
Wasn't pretty but it was cheap and pragmatic

[servodude]

True... it works
But the one true correct answer is YYYYMMDD(HHmmSS)
Cos it works in a sort even if all you have is alphanumeric parsing

Not that it has much to do with the subject, but in the end you are doing this for users, not for the benefit of programmers, or what somebody has deemed as 'correct'.

Dod

Wasn't Kiloran's "user" someone trying to define a new global system?
Or perhaps you missed the winkie...

But as an aside the REAL fail would be forcing a user to view stuff based on your internal encoding

[moorfield]

True... it works
But the one true correct answer is YYYYMMDD(HHmmSS)
Cos it works in a sort even if all you have is alphanumeric parsing

Not that it has much to do with the subject, but in the end you are doing this for users, not for the benefit of programmers, or what somebody has deemed as 'correct'.

Dod

Yes, and No. Today's IT systems ought be built as much for their users as for those supporting & maintaining them. You'd be surprised how details like date formats (and sorting of) matter. YYYYMMDD is the "no brainer" choice.