Asklemmy

I don't have a clue why we do MM-DD-YYYY and personally I hate how dates are done in the west, to a degree.

For a maths course I've been taking at college, I never use MM-DD in my notebook because that and DD-MM are stupid in my opinion. I always spell out the month first to ensure I don't get mixed up. I honestly envy that some languages like Chinese and Japanese have an individual character to help distinguish between month and day.

Also, I would love if every country using the MM-DD or vice versa format could all agree on which format to use for everyday things.

The month tells you more about conditions like weather but that's kinda it.

My guess is the month is most relevant to an agrarian society. It tells you where you are in the growing cycle that the entire culture revolves around. The day and year offer little practical utility to a 19th century farmer.

Because Star Wars day sounds better when you say “May the Fourth be with you”. That said, I could be convinced to switch to Yoda-style “With you, the Fourth May be”.

I don't know, that's just how I learned it in school so it feels natural for me to use/say.

This post kinda stinks of "why doesn't the US just switch to metric? Are they stupid?"

regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in

You're telling me that if you have a list of scheduled dates in the near future to meet with clients/patients/whatever, you first want them sorted by day, and then month?

So this list is the order you want to see these in?

• 4/5/25
• 8/7/25
• 15/6/25
• 16/5/25
• 23/6/25

Doesn't it make way more sense to see them sorted by month first, then day, so that they're actually in chronological order.

• 5/4/25
• 5/16/25
• 6/15/25
• 6/23/25
• 7/8/25

The only way you could defend the former listing is if you're also arguing that it makes sense to sort the list by the middle column, and hopefully we all agree that is just absurd. We don't alphabetize people by their middle names. You don't look up a word in the dictionary starting with the letter in the middle.

I jest, but I think this illustrates a real-life, commonplace example of when it makes sense. I agree that MM/DD/YYYY is not in order of magnitude, but I do believe it's in order of most significance to least significance given the timescales we are typically dealing with.

Out of curiosity: do you also find it weird that (I'm assuming) you use hour:minute order when reading the clock, instead of minute:hour? Would saying the minute first make more sense to you?

Idk but I think it works best for us. I like how July 4th 2025 sounds over 04 July 2025. Call it cultural differences I suppose and that's that.

You already answered your own question, bud.

it doesn't make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught

Why do you think other people are different than you?

Why, when you want to know the time, do you read the hours first then the minutes? Why not just read the minutes and then figure out the hour you're in?