Re:Do not use 'week year': YYYY
by iso1631 on Tuesday January 04, 2022 @08:51AM
(#29794685)
Well yes, as it's an extention of code written in the 1970s, when dates were most commonly referred to with 2 digits.
Even when javascript was written (and likewise with things like perl and php - and of course the underlying function dated back to the 70s ), it was still quite common for people to write dates by hand as 6/6/96 for June 6th 1996, hence people would often write something like
print day() + "/" + mon() + "/" + year()
If you wanted to put a 4 digit year many people
print day() + "/" + mon() + "/19" + year()
After 2000 came round, many sites would claim the year was 19100, I still saw these sites until well into the late 00s
However some people wrote print day() + "/" + mon() + "/" + (1900 + year())
Which would give the correct display.
Changing year() from returning a 2 digit (which in the 80s and even in the 90s was often preferable) to 4 digits would be a breaking change. Changing it to being "the last two digits" rather than "number of years since 1900" would be a breaking change. That's not something that people like to do, hence things like "getFullYear" to return a 4 digit year (or 3 digit for <1000 etc)
Even when javascript was written (and likewise with things like perl and php - and of course the underlying function dated back to the 70s ), it was still quite common for people to write dates by hand as 6/6/96 for June 6th 1996, hence people would often write something like
print day() + "/" + mon() + "/" + year()
If you wanted to put a 4 digit year many people
print day() + "/" + mon() + "/19" + year()
After 2000 came round, many sites would claim the year was 19100, I still saw these sites until well into the late 00s
However some people wrote print day() + "/" + mon() + "/" + (1900 + year())
Which would give the correct display.
Changing year() from returning a 2 digit (which in the 80s and even in the 90s was often preferable) to 4 digits would be a breaking change. Changing it to being "the last two digits" rather than "number of years since 1900" would be a breaking change. That's not something that people like to do, hence things like "getFullYear" to return a 4 digit year (or 3 digit for <1000 etc)