Na-Noo said:
@jasay and Caine
I should search for the other times this has come up.
But anyway, storing and internal representation I find to be different to the way people like to read it.
Out of curiosity is that how you would right the date on paper to hand to someone else to read?
Of course not. The accepted standard (around here) is DD/MM/YY (which would be my second choice).
Sometimes history yields standards which in retrospect could be better, unfortunately they are hard or impossible to change.
For instance, I'm also annoyed by the pronunciation of numbers in a lot of European languages.
Take the number 235. According to a base 10 numbering system this is 2*10^2 + 3*10^1 + 5*10^0.
English would call this: two-hundred (and) Thirty five, where thirty is an abbreviation of three-ten (this is quite acceptable).
Dutch would call this: twee-honderd en vijf en dertig (two-hundred and five and thirty). For some odd reason we reverse the last two digits (Germans do the same).
Japanese would call this: ni-hyaku san-ju go (two-hundred three-ten five) which is the best way in my opinion. It's nice, regular, easy and conforms to how the numbering system works mathematically.
(Note: I'm leaving the French out of this (they pronounce 90 as four times twenty plus ten) which is too insane to even discuss.)
Naturally, I cannot change these words in my Language. When naming files on my computer though, I'm free to alter the date in a format which is easy for me. And most people who see these files immediately understand a) why they are different and b ) what format is being used (I use YYYY/MM/DD to emphasize the fact that the first parts is the year and therefore an alternative date representation is being used).
We're stuck with the result of many years of history. It is kinda surprising though, that Americans have a tendency to end up with the least logical decision (MM/DD/YY, fahrenheit, etc.).
Well, enough off topic stuff for now. Back to business...
