this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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But we read left to right and the most important part is furthest right hardest to read. It's convenient for computers sorting alphabetically, but bad for people reading it.
The most important part is the year.
Why? The year changes least quickly, (especially the decade) so you can often infer without needing it.
The same reason "one thousand" is written 1000 and not 0001
Because that's the way it's said? Dates are spoken day month year. Because you go more specific to more general.
Depends on where you live
Because it's the most significant. If it's wrong or missing you're off by much more than if the day or month is wrong.
But that's good, like a parity check. Because your wrong by much more, it's easier to tell from context clues. That's why people abbreviated the year to 'in 98' or something like that.
I tried reading your comment right to left and was left even more confused.
now fixed sorry
Okay, hear me out.
With other numbers, non-date numbers, we put the numbers representing the most quantity to the left, and numbers representing the last quantity to the right, eg 1 hundred, ten and 1 would be 111, where the number representing 100 qty comes first from the left, and each position moving to the right, represents a smaller and smaller amount.
Since years are longer than months, which are longer than days, the YYYY-MM-DD format actually follows the same convention that we commonly use for all other numbering systems, big on the left, small on the right.
So why would the date be the exception?