> so all years are the start of a decade

This isn't the standard technical meaning of 'decade'.

“Decade” isn’t a technical term, which is the point here. It has no intrinsic meaning except “a span of ten years”. Everything else is nominal, not technical; conflating the two is basically nerd sniping, and enlightens no-one.

> “Decade” isn’t a technical term

This whole article and thread is about building technical systems for dates.

In a technical context, 'decade' is a term with a specific standard meaning, which is that it starts on a year ending with a zero.

It's not nerd sniping to point that out in a thread already all about giving dates precise technical meanings!

The article is satire.

The thread is nothing but nerd sniping.

There is no technical context for time defining “decades” that is anything other than nominal.

The fact that people are so hung up on this detail is itself evidence that it has no concrete philosophical foundation. Any definition you care to toss around is arbitrary.

It is pure bikeshed, and this is what gives the article its glimmer of truth that validates the satire.

Says who? I routinely refer to something I did a long time ago as "two decades ago", whether the current year ends in zero, one, or something else.

> Says who?

ISO

I feel like this entire thread has been an elaborate attempt to demonstrate that you know an ISO definition. With the carefully constructed adjectives used to describe the definition ("standard technical meaning", "In a technical context") leading inexorably to the "ISO" gotcha.

To save others time, here's the ISO-8601 document which is apparently being referenced: https://dgn.isolutions.iso.org/obp/ui#iso:std:iso:8601:-1:ed...

"decade" is defined in 3.1.2.22:

decade time scale unit (3.1.1.7) of 10 calendar years (3.1.2.21), beginning with a year whose year number is divisible without remainder by ten Note 1 to entry: Decade is also used to refer to an arbitrary duration (3.1.1.8) of 10 years, however decade is not used as such in this document.

ISO 8601 is the standard technical way to refer to time and has been for ages - I guessed everyone who worked with computers and time would know about it sorry thought it was obvious.

What's not so standard, in my opinion, is that people be required to restrict their use of language to the noted restrictive sense of a definition as used "in [that] document."

Yes, yes, all of the adjectival disclaimers were used to try to align the discussion directly to how words are used "in [that] document." While the document is highly important, there are many technical contexts in which it is completely appropriate to talk about decades without the slightest consideration of how the same term might be used therein.