posted
I don't mean that I don't know what the fourth of July is.
I mean that date format is inconsistent; for some reason or another the US decided that their independence day will be "07/04/1776" and not "04/07/1776". It's driving me crazy.
Mind you, I understand the logic. The first thing you see is the month, not the day, meaning it gives you the perspective - and you know first off what month it is - the day will make little difference (usually) - so it gives you the general picture first.
But it's inconsistent. And it's killing me.
If it were year-month-day, one thing. If it's day-month-year it's the same. But month-day-year is just too confusing, I don't know when it's American and when it's worldwide. I never know when a letter is written in this format or the other - and I ned to do a lot of guesswork.
It only settles in on Armistice Day and on D-Day. But it's killing me. WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE IN TWO DIFFERENT WAYS? WHY DID ONE HAVE TO REINVENT THE WHEEL? Can't either side give up? Just like metrical and imperial systems. Neither's necessarily better, but at least they've got a completely different format. 15' isn't 15 metres, and 10M isn't 10 miles.
[/shouts]
I'm insane. But I have reason to be. Jonny
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Support ISO-standard date format: 2005-08-16.
Plus, it sorts correctly automatically, no conversion needed.
But the reason for the American format is that it directly reflects how we say dates: August 16, 2005.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
Pops, the Y10K crisis will be horrible, that's for sure. Probably interrupt beer delivery and everything.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I also wish we (America) would go to the metric system. All through college, I would assume whatever problem I was given was taking place in Europe, so I could use metric units. Muuuch simpler. Which is why I'm one of the few people around who know their height in meters (1.90m). I'm also about 91kg.
I never knew the dates were different.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I just think dates should be properly supported as a data type, and could care less how they're stored, letting people create representations however they like Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote: Just like metrical and imperial systems. Neither's necessarily better, but at least they've got a completely different format.
Excuse me? Neither's necessarily better? do you think it's easier to remember 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1760 yards in a mile (or 5280 feet in a mile), OR 10mm in a cm, 10cm in a dm, 10dm in a m, 1000m in a km?
This brings up a question, is 10 meters called anything special?
Posts: 879 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
Dagonee: there's no such thing as "just data", except the binary data that higher level programming languages (which SQL assuredly is) should not be exposing directly to the programmer (except with express and preferably difficult effort).
Every bit of data in SQL or other decently high level programming language has a type which determines the operations that are possible on it. This does not mean that data is in an object in the sense of OOP, just that it is manipulated in a certain way.
Now, most data has a typical representation which is almost all we see of the data, but that doesn't mean it is the data.
Many people put SQL dates into some form of string (varchar, commonly), but that's a bad practice. Instead, one should use the SQL date and time types, which sort naturally but can be displayed any way one chooses. These do have a typical representation, but often one you wouldn't want to display -- seconds since the epoch, perhaps.
Objects are only a narrow section of possible data typing systems, all of which the above comments are applicable to. I much prefer the ability to create first class types that needn't use primitives and other objects as internal data representations. Haskell has excellent capabilities in this line, letting me do things like
code:
data Color = Red | Green | Blue
No need to keep track of constant strings, no need to use a number lookup, colors just "are" red, green, blue, or whatever else has been defined -- like integers just are 0, 1, 5, -2, or whatever. If you want to do stuff dependent on the RGB values of numbers, you'd write a function that accepted something of type Color and returned some type of thing containing the appropriate numeric information.
Or for an even better example:
code:
data Tree a = Leaf a | Branch (Tree a) (Tree a)
Which tells us a Tree holding things of type a can be made by either having a Leaf holding something of type a or a Branch holding two trees holding things of type a.
So I could make a function which retrieves the "leftmost" leaf of a Tree as follows:
code:
leftmost (Leaf x) = x leftmost (Branch left right) = leftmost (left)
These types are all just as first class as Haskell's built-in types, the latter just have some syntactic sugar and low level optimizations.
This is unlike an OO language such as java, where the types programmers create are not as first class as java's types.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I fear ours is a weak and degenerate time. In the old days, when people fought their way to power over a heap of corpses, they forced the conquered to submit to Christianity, or Catholicism, or Islam. Me, I just plan to force conversion to the metric system. Alas, as dictators go, I'm rather boring.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I have a lot of meter in my poems... (But not metre... Sorry - my spelling habits prevent it from being a perfect pun!)
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Nevertheless, the spelling prevents it from being perfect. Perhaps not the only reason for it, but one nonetheless.
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Be glad you don't live in Canada, where the date format you see depends on . . . whoever wrote the code or the date down. Seriously. Canadians. Fickle. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Phew! I just breathed a sigh of relief that I don't live in Canada. Besides that date thing, there's also the problem that it is so FAR AWAY from everything.
On the positive side, I hear that there is ample parking.
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged |
You break that down into decadays (1/10 of a day), centidays (1/100 of a day), and millidays (1/1000 of a day). Easy enough, right?
Why on earth did we decide that we should break the day into 24 pieces (or worse, 2 halves broken into 12ths!), then break those pieces into 60ths, and then those pieces into 60ths, and then those pieces into 100ths?
Makes no sense.
Edit: this of course doesn't mean anything date wise, but there I am sure we could improve as well. Is there such thing as a metric calendar? *checks google*
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
| IP: Logged |
No one really knows. However, the tradition goes back a long way. Take, for example, this quote from Encyclopedia Britannica:
The earliest known sundial still preserved is an Egyptian shadow clock of green schist dating at least from the 8th century BC. It consists of a straight base with a raised crosspiece at one end. The base, on which is inscribed a scale of six time divisions, is placed in an east-west direction with the crosspiece at the east end in the morning and the west end in the afternoon. The shadow of the crosspiece on this base indicates the time. Clocks of this kind are still in use in primitive parts of Egypt. The Babylonians seem to be the ones who started the six fetish, but it is not clear why.
Why are there 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute?
Again, it is unclear. It is known, however, that Egyptians once used a calendar that had 12 30-day months, giving them 360 days. This is believed to be the reason why we now divide circles into 360 degrees. Dividing 360 by 6 gives you 60, and 60 is also a base number in the Babylonian math system.
It's obvious where days, years, and months come from, but I've always wondered about hours, minutes, seconds, and weeks.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Wow….. I learned something on Hatrack today. Guess I’m done for the day. I can go home and go to sleep now. Yippie!
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
adam.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Evil]](graemlins/evil.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Grumble]](graemlins/grumble.gif)
whippersnapper.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
