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.

[vand]

What a difference a few weeks or months makes - although the week is not quite over, my UK/Gold heavy portfolio has positively soared since the last update on this thread, and even slightly more since the dark(er) (grey?) days of Q3 2023.

Been thinking that it's bound to retreat at some point, but it's just continued to march consistently higher for months... just goes to show the value of simply doing nothing and resisting the urge to tinker.

[Gerry557]

Well things have been on a tear recently. I was wondering if sell in May would come into play.

I haven't checked yet, tomorrow's job, but it might be a slightly down week this week after all the rises.

I think things have been up and down over 7% since the start of the year. Still if things do fall it might help the buying process.