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I'm a 65 year old English engineer who was brought up on imperial and worked to it for many years - and its critics today simply don't understand the way that it was used! My first job in the real world was as a turner - manufacturing drive shafts for relatively large turbines on a lathe. All our engineering drawings were in imperial measurements - but that did not mean yards, feet, inches and eighths of an inch. The drawing I worked to told me that the shaft should be 103.5 inches long, 6.35 inches diameter and I should put a 5 thousandths of an inch chamfer on each edge. As a check after it came out of the lathe, I would weigh it and the specifications told me that the answer should be 537.88 ounces.
Yes, the original definition of imperial measurements was pretty arcane - but it was not used that way for serious things. We used it as a metricated system with different basic units to the SI system. And I would say, as an aside, that the imperial units are more pragmatic than the metric ones. They were based on every-day life whereas the metric system was driven by the French who tend to like to base their systems on some academic and philosophical structure. Metric units tend to be too big or too small for pragmatic usage - if I'm measuring the width of a worktop or the diameter of a screw, I really don't give a damn whether or not the unit I'm using is some full decimal fraction of the circumference of the earth or the distance between the earth and the sun! If I'm ordering a glass of beer, I want to receive a quantity that is comfortable to lift but large enough that I'm not going to have to order another within the next few minutes!
Martin
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I hope you're aware that metric time isn't dd/mm/yyyy nor ISO8601 or similar.
In the original metric system, 250 or so years ago, a week was ten days. And every day was divided into decidays and centidays.
This (luckily?) didn't catch on.
But in 1954 when they created the SI-system they settled for the second as a base for time.
So metric time is measured in decasecond, hectosecond, kilosecond or megasecond or gigasecond.
I prefer ISO8601! 
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Was that before or after the shift from days starting at Noon and running overnight? 
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Canada is metric. That's why all temperatures are in F, weights in lb and heights in feet and inches.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Canada must have "New Metric" 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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... and we buy plywood in 4'x8' x 5.0mm sheets.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
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I think my favourite over here is Tirecentre.
Talk about culture collision.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Why don't we just go back to the old units of measurement? We still measure horses in hands. Drinks are measured out in fingers. We should bring back the ell, the cubit, the palm and the digits. Add to that the carucate, the hide, the oxgang, the virgate, the yardland, and the quinaria.
Do people still use the barleycorn for measuring shoe sizes?
How about the lachter or the button?
Don't forget the line, the page, the rod, the step, and the stadion.
I think weights are still sometimes measured in bags, are they not? The Dutch cask is used for measuring butter and cheese, I think. How about the duella, the keel, the lot, the mark, the pennyweight, the roll, the room, the sarpler, the slug, the tod, the truss, and the whey.
I could go on and on (and on and on and on) but I think I've put just about everyone asleep by now.
The point is, if you are going to be sending code or data where it may need to be read by other cultures, either choose an international standard, or just document what standard you are using and let the user use their brain (or a calculator) from there. standards of time and measurement come and go. Some stay longer than others. All have their advantages and disadvantages. It all depends on the context of its use, and the primary audience.
Money makes the world go round ... but documentation moves the money.
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That would be really nice, but over the years I've found that the bigger problem is systems using different units within the same environment, even though all are metric. E. g. in construction industry, measurements are typically given in mm, except for some that are, by some unwritten law, always presented in cm, and a few in meters (meters above sea level to be concise).
Woe to the CAD software programmer who needs to process data based on such measurements without concise information where they're coming from!  But I guess it's even worse for programmers in the U.S. ... 
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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Maybe we could get everyone to drive on the proper side of the road too. i.e. the left. 
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5teveH wrote: Maybe we could get everyone to drive on the proper side of the road too. i.e. the left middle.
FTFY 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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But ... the majority of cars I see *are* driving on the left side! And that's for the better, because those are the ones heading my way! 
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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As long as they will be things like national pride, country specific formats, as dumb as they may be, will not disappear.
It will probably take decades to get rid of mm/dd/yyyy (which, while I understand the write-it-as-you-speak-it, has overall more disadvantages than advantages)
It will take centuries to settle for imperial or metric ( I prefer metric because more straight forward to me, but I don't care as long as we settle for something)
Flying cars is probably the only way of getting everybody to use the same side of the road for driving, and I am not even convinced about that. Maybe this will not be an issue anymore with autonomous driving.( You would not imagine what a waste of resources and time developing a left hand drive and right hand drive version of a car is).
This, as well as many other things, would have been solved a long time ago if people had common sense. But ...
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Rage wrote: You would not imagine what a waste of resources and time developing a left hand drive and right hand drive version of a car is
The car needs to be able to do both; and it should know where to switch. There's people coming from England using the canal; if their cars only can drive left, you'd get very dangerous holidays and visits.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Quote: write-it-as-you-speak-it
What about the 4th of July? Were Americans saying dd/mm/yyyy before but switched at some point, but "the 4th of July" stayed as is?
Also it doesn't really make sense to me to start with month, then day, then year. Either go from less specific to more or the other way around, but don't mix them up.
What time is it? It's 7 minutes, 35 seconds, 4 hours.
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Riz Thon wrote: it doesn't really make sense to me to start with month, then day, then year
Me neither, but the write it as you speak was the argument brought here last time this was raised as a point in the Lounge
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But today is 07/04/2021 - It says so on my task bar. Not a celebration?
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My currente IDE:
--------------- Build Succeeded: 04/06/2021 11:39:48 ---------------
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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I've been using "yyyy/mm/dd" for years, unless specifically told not to by my employer (which happens more often than you'd think).
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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#realJSOP wrote: I've been using "yyyy/mm/dd" for years, unless specifically told not to by my employer (which happens more often than you'd think).
Same here. Unfortunately Duhsigners, ProderpOwners, and PointygramManagers live in a reality distortion field where everyone uses the same date format they do. At least those nitwits have no control over the backend, so it's DateTimeOffsets everywhere until the presentation code at least.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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US method mirrors how it is said when spoken.
We don't say "the sixth or April"; we say "April sixth" - and ergo, that is how we write it. How do you normally say that in Canada (for those parts that have both day and night). Even done numerically, only, we follow the spoken word. (both version put the year in the rear). In other languages they do say things like 'ersten Mai" - that's their problem and their way - I didn't bitch to them about changing the arse-backwards word order. That's their problem.
Now, for the "Euro" version - it sorts like shyte . . . worse than the US version sorts, and that a turd and a half. The year should go first, then the month, then the day - a four-digit year, at that, lest, for example, something just over a century old be classified as very current.
So that's that. I was going to use all-caps so the forgoing instructive blurb is taken and accepted as order that must be obeyed, but, feeling generous this morning I'll let you spend a bit more time adapting to before, well, THE SHIFT-LOCK.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I hear that argument a lot ("we say it like...", and I hear "4th of July" a lot, too. If you say "July 4th" or "4th of July" then both are unambiguous. The point is that if you said "7/4" or "4/7" there's ambiguity for the rest of the world.
My point is: avoiding ambiguity is pitifully easy in this case.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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"Fourth of July" is a bad example. We don't normally swap in a holiday name in place of the date. Using your date, however, the date, when fully enunciated, is "July Fourth Seventeen Seventy Six" and the reverse is rarely if used at all.
The ambiguity however is in date formatting for non-technical usage (else, YYYYMMDD). That being said, the ambiguity would really exist in a local wherein the common idiom is in one order and the written version reverses that order. Jumping on the bandwagon to accommodate languages that use a reverse word order - why ? There is no ambiguity here - except for the (in our point of view) those who do it backwards elsewhere.
I haven't spent enough time in Canada to know the common speech version. Perhaps this written format is a manifestation of yet another concession to Quebec ?
What could be less ambiguous than to write something the same way it is said?
We are on the proper side of the Atlantic - the "New World". Let the old world continue to fester in their traditions and take a fresh breath!
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos, GHB wrote: We are on the proper side of the Atlantic - the "New World". Let the old world continue to fester in their traditions and take a fresh breath!
I draw your attention to the fact that the Monroe Doctrine appears to have lapsed.
As long as nations in the "New World" and the "Old World" trade, there will be a need for agreed weights and measures and agreed methods of representing them. In most modern languages*, units are typically written in decreasing order of size (5 dollars and 21 cents = $5.21; 4 pounds, 3 shillings, and 9 pence = £4 3s 9d; 5 yards, 2 feet, and 4 inches = 5yd 2' 4"), the only exception being time. This alone makes the non-ISO 8601 formats suspect.
* I'm told that in Arabic numbers are written from the digits up - one and twenty and three hundred.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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First problem to address: French - cannot count to seventy in any rational manner. Arabic looks good at that point. Besides, aren't we taught arithmetic operations least-to-most significant digits?
The unit argument you use would be good except for one thing: Dates are Labels ! For most common usage, I haven't heard about anyone in any date format using fractional months (for example). I mean, really, months vary in length and the full day labels include one of seven flavors. For that matter, the date is different in different parts of the globe (Greenwich is not the center of the universe). Noon happens when the sun's high.
But perhaps your current date is April 63/4, 2021 or 6.75 April 2021 ?
(or 25 Nisan 5781)
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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