ISO 8601 allows all kinds of crazy time stamps. RFC 3339 is much nicer and simpler, and the sweet spot is at the intersection of ISO 8601 and RFC 3339.
Then again, ISO 8601 contains some nice things that RFC 3339 does not, like ranges and durations, recurrences…
I am a big fan of iso 8601, I just wish it was possible to write more dates than February 27th, 2013 with it
Feb 27th 2013
Boom. Everything is in a different format so you can order it however you want and it’s still readable.
Why use abbreviations in your preferred language when you can have a solution that is language-agnostic and universal (for a given calendar) ?
Because if there’s one problem simple enough that I trust an LLM or translation app not to fuck up, it’s simple translation of month labels from on language to another. If you’re writing in English, it’s reasonable to have month abbreviations in English. If someone wants to read it in a different language, they’re going to have to use translation software or hire a human translator to do it. And regardless of translation method, simple date translation will be among the most reliable and faithfully translated parts.
I feel like YYYYMMDD (without dashes) might be a format in ISO 8601, but I’m fully expecting to be corrected soon. But I didn’t say think, I said feel. YYYYMMDD has a similar vibe to YYYY-MM-DD, ya feel me?
Nope, you are correct! From the Wikipedia page, which cites the standards document:
- Representations can be done in one of two formats – a basic format with a minimal number of separators or an extended formatwith separators added to enhance human readability. The standard notes that “The basic format should be avoided in plain text.” The separator used between date values (year, month, week, and day) is the hyphen, while the colon is used as the separator between time values (hours, minutes, and seconds). For example, the 6th day of the 1st month of the year 2009 may be written as “2009-01-06” in the extended format or as “20090106” in the basic format without ambiguity.
My goodness, some of the comments in here must come from people who thought that those writing the standard were morons who did no research.