Soldato
dating system in america, Hello!!
- Thread starter masterchiefx2
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Deleted member 66701
Actually - the American system makes perfect sense and I'm surprised on a computer forum no-one has identified the reason why it is this way.
It all started in the late 60's early 70's when computer were starting to be used in the office environment and it's all to do with data sorting.
For example - if we had our dates of 05/01/1980, 04/03/1980 and 03/02/1980 and sorted them, smallest to largest - a simple left to right comparator (the most common) would give us the following sequence:-
03/02/1980
04/03/1980
05/01/1980
Which clearly doesn't make sense as the smallest date ends up at the end, not the start.
However, convert these dates to American format and you get 01/05/1980, 03/04/1980 and 02/03/1980 giving:-
01/05/1980
02/03/1980
03/04/1980
This gives the correct ascending ordering.
We now have an international date standard (ISO 8601) in yyyy/mm/dd to solve the same problem.
It all started in the late 60's early 70's when computer were starting to be used in the office environment and it's all to do with data sorting.
For example - if we had our dates of 05/01/1980, 04/03/1980 and 03/02/1980 and sorted them, smallest to largest - a simple left to right comparator (the most common) would give us the following sequence:-
03/02/1980
04/03/1980
05/01/1980
Which clearly doesn't make sense as the smallest date ends up at the end, not the start.
However, convert these dates to American format and you get 01/05/1980, 03/04/1980 and 02/03/1980 giving:-
01/05/1980
02/03/1980
03/04/1980
This gives the correct ascending ordering.
We now have an international date standard (ISO 8601) in yyyy/mm/dd to solve the same problem.
Soldato
I'm not convinced by that. I'm pretty sure there would be films/TV from way before the late 60s that would show Americans saying the date as "October 8th" rather then "8th of October"
Man of Honour
OP most people can live with it, why don't you. 
They dont even go as far as to say "th" in my experience. The number of times i have heard (to use your example) "October 8" both written and spoken over there....
When the girls are at the bar go to get a drink and say in a slow sean connery voice "Excuse me ladies" your in
It's stupidly easy, just walk around talking, you'll be amazed at the amount of women that ask you about your accent...score
That's excellent news
Looking forward to it even more now lol
Soldato
Nah. I'll speak the th, and will also use it in emails now and then when referencing a date.
The only systems which makes sense are the ones where you have the least significant to the most significant ordering, known as little and big endian, which is what virtually all computer processors use.
Soldato
Yeah yeah whatever
What annoys me is when they say a year e.g. 2002 they pronounce it as two thousand two whereas we say two thousand and two.
As for the date sorting that's nonsense. To sort a date you should format it in the iso standard way of yyyy-mm-dd. And it follows that a timestamp is yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss I.e moving from biggest to smallest.
Besides in the 60's the computers would have been using two digit years for storing dates hence the whole y2k thing, and the fact that the unix epoch is 1970-01-01 00:00:00 and unix time is the number of seconds since this date.
What annoys me is when they say a year e.g. 2002 they pronounce it as two thousand two whereas we say two thousand and two.
As for the date sorting that's nonsense. To sort a date you should format it in the iso standard way of yyyy-mm-dd. And it follows that a timestamp is yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss I.e moving from biggest to smallest.
Besides in the 60's the computers would have been using two digit years for storing dates hence the whole y2k thing, and the fact that the unix epoch is 1970-01-01 00:00:00 and unix time is the number of seconds since this date.
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Soldato
I'm on the fence with that one. If I hear someone say "twenty-ten" It does sound American but it's no different at all to someone saying "nineteen-ninety"
Man of Honour
They don't have to be the same at everything, just do certain things right like date order, spelling and driving on the correct side of the road - if they could master spelling and pronunciation they'd be dangerous.
I'm not entirely convinced that is the reason why it was adopted, I haven't checked but I'd be rather surprised if it was only taken up from the 60s-70s. It might be convenient in certain situations for that reason but it sounds much like making the most of an unintended quirk.
Little if you write it out in full but putting it into number format allows a greater chance of confusion especially if the day of the month is 12 or below - you've then got to know the date format that is used. If everyone used the same then we wouldn't have the chance of uncertainty. I've always thought the British way makes sense as you're listing from the smallest and most frequently changing grouping (days) leading to the bigger and less frequently changing groups (months-years) or if you really have to then years-months-days also makes sense.
Soldato
Soldato
Proper people will say twenty-oh-two. You never heard of the year 1985 referred to as one-thousand, nine-hundred eighty-five, have you?
I've used both and have never has cause to be confused over which is which.
I can see the sense of a universal standard though.
Soldato
I still have to stop & think about it, BUT only when I'm on a UK site and the day of the month is 12 or below. The US format now seems normal, finally after many yrs of living across the pond.
Soldato
There is one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_day
and a converter:
http://www.onlineconversion.com/julian_date.htm
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Bannage shortly for questions like this. 
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