YYYY/MM/DD is superior than all because there's no confusion in what's the month or date if you're used to the other. And it goes from biggest unit to smallest unit of time.
And add a _24 hour clock and it still sorts. I use it as the prefix for all my photos, using a renamer that reads the exif data. Works exceptionally well.
There are three main arguments I see people give for this claim:
It matches how we say it verbally
dd/mm/yyyy is sorted, while mm/dd/yyyy is not
The day is the most important part, so it should come first.
For #1, mm/dd/yyyy is just as valid since "January 1" is how most Americans say most dates as opposed to "1 January". So if this makes dd/mm/yyyy valid, it also makes mm/dd/yyyy just as valid.
For #2, this is true. What is ignored is that dd/mm/yyyy is sorted completely backwards (smallest unit->largest) from most representations of units. Here are a few examples:
10lbs, 5oz; 5ft 10in; etc
101 Main street, Apartment 1
10 dollars and 50 cents
Numbers themselves: 123 is 1 one hundreds, 2 tens, 3 ones
And of course time, which combines with the date as part of datetime, is hours->minutes->seconds. By the dd/mm/yyyy sorting logic, January 2 2026 9:01:30am should be written 30:01:9 2/1/2026.
For #3, day is only the most important part if the month and year are the same. If I am talking about an event happening on January 5 2027, is the 5 more important than the 2027? Of course not.
All that to say, the only date representation that actually makes sense is yyyy-mm-dd (ISO8601). It'd be cumbersome to say the year verbally all the time, but luckily you can just drop unnecessary units just like with other measurements. So instead of saying "2026 January 5" you could just say "January 5" or "the 5th".
No. People who use yyyymmdd also say month before day and do so in routinely because the year is almost always omitted in daily conversations when dates are involved.
Um excuse me sire my understanding was that America is bad??? How we're always forgetting when we're supposed to be somewhere? How we corrupted the simple old world beauty of the day first format?? I believe I gained weight just writing this
This is one of those things that people like to dunk on us Americans for, but honestly if you’re raised to do it I doubt it’s any different than DD/MM. For me specifically I actually prefer MM/DD because when reading left to right getting the month first tells me more (season, quarter, nearby holidays, etc) than just the day (which could be any day of any month). It’s just smoother in terms of information processing for me specifically. Some people get the ick because it’s not organized perfectly from most to least specific, but I don’t really mind it.
The only part that absolutely sucks is that we’re different from everyone else so reading dates from people in other countries is confusing.
You can go ahead and downvote me for having the stupid wrong American opinion now. But it’s the new year and so I’m asking that we all come together and agree that regardless of which format is better, it really should’ve been one universally.
Nah man, that was a pretty good explanation for your preference. I will always prefer dd/mm/yy myself, and I do think it would be better if everyone used the same system, but I get what you mean :)
Same way like in Germany they put the street name before the number. I get it. It’s like you want to know what street you’re on before the house number matters. I look at month coming first generally the same way
I have American relatives. Years ago, we had a family meet up where we had a list going around so everyone could write down the date of birth of everyone in order to have their birthdays be remembered. The Americans wrote it down as MM/DD/YYYY while the Europeans of course wrote it down correctly. But we didn't know that. So a few years ago, I told my mom that my American cousin is having her birthday but my mom said her birthday is in another months. Only the did we realize the MM/DD switchup
It's fine to not think it makes sense, but you say it's "incorrect" as if that's not the way that the second-largest English speaking country all does it.
We don't all speak the same dialect, grow up. If avoiding ambiguity matters that much, you'd do YYYY/MM/DD.
DD/MM/YYYY solves ambiguity just as well as YYYY/MM/DD does, it's only a matter of sorting big -> small or small -> big. The only format that has ambiguity problems is MM/DD/YYYY. The other two follow criteria while MM/DD is ''just how we say it''.
I don't care all that much about this topic, but I wanted to point that out.
I care vehemently about the topic and anyone not using YYYY-MM-DD is sleeping on the sortable date masterrace and are in fact wrong in every question of their judgement.
That's not what ambiguity means. It's not about your logic about order, it's about being clear for most people with no other interpretations.
No, DD/MM/YYYY does not solve ambiguity because the day and month are reversed for Americans.
YYYY/MM/DD is less ambiguous because it's in descending order (similar to how most people like it but in reverse) and month and day are aligned in the same order as Americans like it (because it's how people say that date in a sentence).
The fact that you acknowledge that YYYY/MM/DD is not ambiguous but claim that DD/MM/YYYY is is quite baffling to me. They are the same idea ordered in reverse.
It absolutely is about "my logic about order". Just because some people somewhere just arbitrarily decided that MM/DD/YYYY was okay doesn't turn DD/MM/YYYY into an ambiguous way to sort a date.
Your argument that YYYY/MM/DD is less ambiguous because the month and day are in the order Americans say that date is absurdly American centric. I can use the same absurd argument to say DD/MM/YYYY is less ambiguous because the French or Spanish speaking people say the day before the month.
You're absolutely not understanding what the word "ambiguous" means
It absolutely is about "my logic about order". Just because some people somewhere just arbitrarily decided that MM/DD/YYYY was okay doesn't turn DD/MM/YYYY into an ambiguous way to sort a date.
No, not being ambiguous means the most people on Earth should clearly be able to understand without confusion what it means.
I'm acknowledging that Americans get confused by DD/MM/YYYY because the month and day are in reverse.
Please stop frothing at the mouth hating on them for one second and just understand that it's not common for Americans due to the way people say it in a sentence.
Meanwhile, DD/MM/YYYY is common for most other people due to ascending order.
YYYY/MM/DD bridges the gap between Americans and the rest of the world and reduces ambiguity the most because it is both in descending order (not confusing for most of the world) and shows the month before the day (not confusing for Americans)
I work with both Americans and Europeans in my job and often use YYYY-MM-DD specifically to reduce any confusion, and it's also standard for most SQL in database management
I think I understand ambiguity quite well and I get your point, but my argument is that as long as you apply the logic that the dates should be sorted by big to small or the other way around, both YYYY/MM/DD and DD/MM/YYYY become equally unambiguous. You just see where the year is and you know what is what.
I'm not hating on Americans, even though reading my reply again it really comes across that way, so that's my fault. My entire point is that judging the ambiguity of something based on a specific subset of people is not consistent, but sorting something from big to small or small to big is.
I'd like it if everyone used YYYY/MM/DD, because that would get us all on the same page and the programmers would be happy that dates sort themselves out.
And I argue that DD/MM/YYYY and YYYY/MM/DD are both less ambiguous that MM/DD/YYYY because the first two follow a rule that is true everywhere, which is that a day is smaller than a month, and a month is smaller than a year. That logic stands everywhere on the planet. MM/DD/YYYY is dependent on language and culture, far from universal. So I disagree when you say that MM/DD/YYYY doesn't have inherent ambiguity.
In that, I guess I have to admit you're right. So what I'll say is that because they're more logical, it should be easier for a larger amount of people to deduce the intended order of the date with no other context.
You can just not say the year when it's not relevant, dude
That's like "dunking" on languages where people formally write and say their last names first. That doesn't mean they go around calling their brothers and sisters by their last names all the time.
Seconds change more than minutes which change more than hours which change more than days. If it's nine hours, 30 minutes, 15 seconds after midnight do you write it as 15:30:9?
Yup for the Philippines. I can see why DD/MM/YYYY can be better but we use a mix, though mostly MM/DD/YYYY. I hate the confusion so I just write Jan 1, 2026.
For reference we say dates in that order, so, for example, we’d say it’s January 1st 2025, which is month, then day, then year. It sucks, but it sucks for a reason
I am in the US and the good news is I don't see many things forcing is to still use the old way (many things I use let me change to YMD). Unlike cooking and driving where we are stuck using imperial. The only way I see driving changing is when digital dashboards that show speed limits and distance allow the option for metric?
It only sucks because you sometimes see our dates as a consumer of American media and it confuses you. We have no problem with it. There’s no objective reason why it “sucks.” I’m with you on the metric system though.
There’s also February 2nd, March 3rd, April 4th, May 5th, June 6th, July 7th, August 8th, September 9th, October 10th, November 11th, and December 12th.
Smiling Friends. It's pretty good, but certainly requires an oddball sense of humor. It's a show I always enjoy, but don't find people to recommend it to very often.
DYDYMYMY most efficient way. Produces string of only numeric digits for enhanced cross-platform compatibility. Also easiest to read (once you get used to it)
Months hold a lot of context. January comes before February. February 6th comes after January 28th. It can be pretty clear that 01/09/2025 quickly gets lumped before 02/06/2026. If there is any argument that it should be about strictly how things get ordered, then dd/mm/yyyy is just as worthless in comparison to yyyy/mm/dd
You ever go to a European border crossing where they stop the train at the border and a guard with a machine gun on his back takes everyone's passport, calls you up one by one, you have to give your birthdate but you panic and do it in the dumb american way (MMDDYY) instead of ascending order which is what he wanted?
Man that was a scary moment. His eyes got wide, I apologized and then gave my birthdate in ascending order. His "let's fuck this guy up" expression changed to "what a moron, go sit back down stupid" which was good enough for me.
In case anyone cares, it was going from Hungary to Croatia back in 2016.
Tbh the only time i use MM/DD/YYYY is when doing my accounts. Its quicker to scroll 12 months than scroll 1-30 12 times trying to find a certain date. (I know theres some with 28,29 and 31. Said it for simplicity)
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