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Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by chriswarbo on Monday June 20, 2022 @12:41PM (#31812449)
> It’s pretty convenient as the time periods uses the format YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD and I think is easier to mentally parse than MM/DD/YYYY-MM/DD/YYYY

Especially for those outside the USA!

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by ethbr0 on Monday June 20, 2022 @12:47PM (#31812536)
As someone who grew up in the US, it's still bizarre as a programmer to have a mixed-significance ordering (MM-DD-YYYY) instead of any consistently-endian ordering (DD-MM-YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD).

Out of curiosity, in what order do Europeans verbally say full dates with month names? Or does it vary by language?

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by codetrotter on Monday June 20, 2022 @01:24PM (#31812972)
European here. When I state my date of birth I state it as “7th of October 1990”.

When a date is within the current year I state it as for example “27th of June”.

If weekday matters, and specific date is still relevant I’ll say for example “Monday 27th of June”.

I might also simply say “Sunday last week”, “Monday next week”, “Monday at the end of next month”, etc.

Likewise I might say “a couple of weeks ago”, “last week”, “a few days ago”, “in under two weeks”, etc.

Depends on context.

When including a date in a file name I prefer YYYY-MM-DD for date.

When using dates in a directory hierarchy I’ll have years on the top level, with months within them and dates within those.

Sometimes I might use a format like YYYY-mm-ddTHHMMz_s in a file name. For example “something_2022-06-20T1722+0000_1655745728_more_text.tbz”

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by mtoddsmith on Monday June 20, 2022 @01:44PM (#31813229)
YYYY-DD-MM as a folder / filename does not sort correctly. Not a fan.

I much prefer YYYY-MM-DD for its sorting behavior.

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by codetrotter on Monday June 20, 2022 @02:26PM (#31813779)
Sorry, that was a typo. I meant to say YYYY-MM-DD. Edited now.
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by eurasiantiger on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:31AM (#31820248)
Important note: while a datestamp like YYYY-MM-DD does sort correctly, a datetime stamp such as YYYY-MM-DDThh-mm-ss does not because of DST and negative leap seconds.
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by elromulous on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:29PM (#31815472)
Where in Europe? I imagine this might vary by language / region. And could even differ in official use vs vernacular.

And ofc, the mixed order is the inferior option.

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by codetrotter on Monday June 20, 2022 @07:33PM (#31817661)
Norway
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by rzwitserloot on Monday June 20, 2022 @05:52PM (#31816555)
Germanic (Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian) languages just say "10 october", they'd never say "October 10th". Before we get our 'english is so stupid!!!' hat on, in many of these (e.g. Dutch and German), the number '87' is pronounced 'seven-and-eighty' ('zevenentachtig' - 'zeven en tachtig' - seven and eighty), which is stupid. Languages are weird).

Same for the romance ones: It's just "Quatorze juillet" - 14th of July (Bastille day).

English is the weird one, but not that weird, "7th of october" is not much more complicated to say than "October 7th".

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by Terretta on Monday June 20, 2022 @07:55PM (#31817870)
About that romance 87 …

French in France: four twenties seven

French in Switzerland: eighty seven (octante sept)

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by bewuethr on Monday June 27, 2022 @12:32AM (#31890612)
Swiss French is rather "huitante", and also that not in all regions ("quatre-vingt" in the rest), see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_de_Suisse#Nombre...
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by pronik on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:57AM (#31820404)
French is actually not so weird if you think about what a "score" is in English. Gettysburg address literally begins with "four score and seven years ago", which equals to 87.
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by jmiskovic on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @04:08AM (#31821503)
I really hate watching historical documentaries where they spell out dates with day->month->year. If the intention is to teach, then the year is most important number and all other information is to be catalogued in context of broadest time period. The DD-MM-YYYY forces viewers to keep the whole date in their heads before it can be parsed and understood.

The "Algorithms to Live By" book has a good name for this: computational kindness. We should strive to reduce cognitive burden. The bigger the audience, the more effort should go into making data digestible. Unfortunately the established date standard goes against it.

The other problem is mixing endianness: the date information uses little endian, while numbers themselves are spelled out in big endian. The American MM-DD-YYYY on the other hand... I don't know what they were thinking.

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by AdrianB1 on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @08:25AM (#31823013)
Interesting thing I learned about historical battles: the most important part of the date is the season. In my country there were no battles during winter, early spring and late autumn, most were from April to September. It does not mean month is more important than year.
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by matheusmoreira on Monday June 20, 2022 @08:13PM (#31818026)
In portuguese people say "vinte de junho de dois mil e vinte dois", meaning "twenty of june of two thousand twenty two". The first few days of the month are ordinal: people say "primeiro de janeiro" meaning "first of january".

Japanese uses a neat system akin to YYYY-MM-DD. 2022-06-20 becomes 2021年6月20日 meaning "2021 year 6 month 20 day". Really nice to read. Actual pronunciation is very irregular though, especially days of the month where about half of them are irregular.

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by lawn on Monday June 20, 2022 @01:10PM (#31812798)
In Sweden we say 20th June, 2022 and we even use a "DD/MM -YY" shorthand when signing documents for instance, although YYYY-MM-DD is also common and "the more correct".
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by ulkis on Monday June 20, 2022 @03:36PM (#31814708)
Except on food where EU mandates DD-MM-YY(YY).
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by vivganes on Monday June 20, 2022 @11:03PM (#31819366)
> Out of curiosity, in what order do Europeans verbally say full dates with month names? Or does it vary by language?

I am from India and I say "21st of June 2022"

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by irrational on Monday June 20, 2022 @01:36PM (#31813131)
These replies are fascinating. When saying a date I always say month day year. I hadn’t considered that this might be cultural.
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by frutiger on Monday June 20, 2022 @03:20PM (#31814493)
I moved to the US from the UK a little over 10 years ago.

The numeric month and day of my birthday happen to be the same. For this anecdote lets assume it’s 01/01/1970.

When medical staff ask me for my date of birth, I’ll say “1st Jan 1970”. They’ll reply asking “Sorry, Jan 1st?” And I’ll say “yeah”. This blew my (programmer) mind.

Over the years I’ve rewired my brain to say “Jan 1st 1970” and avoid the extra round trip.

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by ethbr0 on Monday June 20, 2022 @02:18PM (#31813700)
As an American, same. I was wondering where the weird month-first came from and figured it might have been verbal first, then codified in writing.
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by irrational on Monday June 20, 2022 @05:37PM (#31816355)
At first I wondered if it had something to do with word order in English, but it sounds like other English speaking countries don’t follow this pattern.
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by Tagbert on Monday June 20, 2022 @11:17PM (#31819448)
Don’t currently “follow this pattern”.

US English has several grammatical and pronunciation characteristics that were common in UK English about 300 years ago. Including being largely (but not totally) rhotic.

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by garmain on Monday June 20, 2022 @01:45PM (#31813238)
In German, Dutch I'll use "twenty June twenty-twentytwo". In English "twentieth of June twenty-twentytwo
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by dividedbyzero on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @01:45AM (#31820323)
Would you actually say "zwanzig Juni" in German? I'd expect "zwanzigster Juni", i.e. 20th June.
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by kseistrup on Monday June 20, 2022 @01:10PM (#31812804)
Denmark: The Nth $month $year. E.g., “Den 20. juni 2022” (lit.: the 20th June 2022).
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by karencarits on Monday June 20, 2022 @03:04PM (#31814269)
The same applies to Norway
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by OJFord on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @08:43PM (#31830774)
Verbally in the same order as written in BrE - 22 June. (Historically '22nd inst. [instant]'.)

'June twenty-second' ordering verbally is as distanctly American (not to say you don't hear it, as with many Americanizms) as it is in writing.

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by jiehong on Monday June 20, 2022 @01:12PM (#31812830)
It does vary by language, but Roman languages (French, Spanish, Italian, etc.) say the 4th of July.

Same in German.

In Polish, it’s the same, except for official matters since 2002, which now follows ISO8601.

Even in the UK they commonly say the 5th of May, and not May, the 5th (but it does happen).

I can’t talk about other languages.

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by chriswarbo on Monday June 20, 2022 @02:07PM (#31813536)
> not May, the 5th (but it does happen)

The only time I see this is in the UK is on movie posters/trailer, e.g. "In cinemas May 5th", which I assume is due to re-using the US material.

PS: 5th of May is a degenerate example, since it's 05/05 regardless of ordering

PPS: 5th of May is also my birthday ;)

Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by AdrianB1 on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @08:27AM (#31823025)
The one difference by language is the day: some languages say 1st or 7th, some just 1 or 7. In mine, except for 1st we use the day number, full reading is "day month, year" where the comma is a small extra space.
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by oneeyedpigeon on Monday June 20, 2022 @02:27PM (#31813797)
It varies by context: sometimes I'll say "20th June", sometimes "June 20th". There's no rhyme or reason.
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by blowski on Monday June 20, 2022 @04:55PM (#31815835)
There isn’t a standard. Most individuals don’t have a consistent standard, let alone languages.
Re:Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines by thedougd on Monday June 20, 2022 @01:42PM (#31813214)
In life I use the latter, but on computers I try to exclusively use the former. YYYY-MM-DD sorts the same lexicographically or chronologically.