this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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[–] Noite_Etion@lemmy.world 298 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (18 children)

Waiting for the ISO 8601 & 9001 gang to show up and promote YYYY-MM-DD.

Edit: That took seconds, a very punctual bunch.

[–] Voyajer@lemmy.world 112 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] Bahnd@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago

Whoo! ISO-8601 fan club!

[–] NJSpradlin@lemmy.world 49 points 3 days ago (1 children)

YYYYMMDD, scrub out the excess fat!

[–] Artyom@lemm.ee 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If only there were some international standards organization to make a decision for us!

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 43 points 3 days ago

That's ... why I'm here

[–] kata1yst@sh.itjust.works 42 points 3 days ago (2 children)

RFC 3339 if you please. Let's be prescriptive.

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago (2 children)

After all the self-important blowhards in the committe were satisified that they had put their fingerprint on the ISO8601 document with bullshit like "year-month-week" format support and signed off, they went home.

The rest stayed behind, waited a few minutes to be safe, and then quickly made RFC3339 like a proper standard.

This is what RFC3339 vs ISO8601 feels like.

[–] kata1yst@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Let's not forget that technically you have to pay for ISO8601, despite it being nearly useless as a standard because it allows several incompatible formats to coexist.

Fucking wild.

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

While a fucking stupid concept, it's nice that this particular format has a monetary deterrent.

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 points 2 days ago

Only if you want to say you have the certification for it, you can use it if you want, that is fine

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

ISO8601 is YYYY-MM-DD nothing to do with weeks and isn;t the only difference of RFC3339 that you can use a space instead of a T in between the date and time? Also RFC3339 is only an internet standard while ISO is a generally international standard?

[–] FrederikNJS@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 points 1 day ago

Yeah I know, but it also has a different use case. As far as I know RFC3339 is mostly used for programming while ISO8601 is the standard for international communication and I wish people would use it more. I have processed American invoices in the wrong month because of their date structure. I have no reason to it, but I always write my date ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD)

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No idea what you based those claims on, but the spec itself (I have the pdf) and Wikipedia's summary disagree. ISO8601 allows for YYY-MM-DD yes but it allows for a bunch of silly stuff.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

Both "2025-W24-4" and "2025‐163" are valid representations of today's date in ISO8601.

(Also the optional timezone makes it utterly useless.)

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 points 1 day ago

The omitting of timezones doesn't matter to a vast majority of the world, since most countries only have one time zone so I don't see a reason why that is relevant in most use cases.

ISO is a general standard, it's in the name and the RFC is created for the internet, that is also in the name/description of the RF.

Using 2025-164 can be handy, I actually use the day of the year to check what invoices from previous year are open since those are the invoices that are due 164 days or more.

[–] tisktisk@piefed.social 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Anyone help enlighten me about whatever this and unix epoch are getting at? Are these really more specific/better than iso 8601 and why specifically?

[–] kata1yst@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Happily!

So, first epoch time. It's a pretty robust standard, covers many use cases, has few edge cases... but it's specifically for machine usage, since it's not human readable and it's not reversible into the past (pre-1970).

ISO 8601 (depending on the annum), by the text of the documentation, these are all valid dates:

  • 2007-04-05T14:30
  • 2007-04-05T12:30−02:00
  • 2007-04-05T14:30Z
  • 200704051430
  • 07-04-05T14:30
  • 2007-95T14:30

Etc.

RFC 3339 (& RFC 9557, it's newest modification) is actually a subset of ISO 8601 and is far more prescriptive. For example you must have a timezone designator. You must have a separator between the date and time. You must use a dash between date elements and a colon between time elements. You can easily add standardized subseconds.

  • 2007-04-05T12:30−02:00
  • 2007-04-05 14:30Z

This means that RFC 3339 is much easier to parse and use by both machines and humans.

This page (reddit, I know...) has a great summary, and so in the interest of knowledge and attribution I'll link it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ISO8601/comments/p572xy/rfc_3339_versus_iso_8601/

This website allows you to more directly compare the two interactively. https://ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/

[–] tisktisk@piefed.social 5 points 3 days ago

This is delicious, and I can't say thank you enough. I like this a lot. If anyone has any insight on more superior standards or subsets of these, please inform me. This made my day tho 😊

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 points 2 days ago

ISO is a wider standard than the RFC standards though which is only for the internet

[–] vinnymac@lemmy.world 32 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I’m now imagining a child who must write 2026-05-10T10:06:09.426792Z on all of their tests.

[–] littleonescared@lemmy.world 24 points 3 days ago (2 children)

They should also add a timezone since most of us don't live at UTC zero timezones -> 2012-12-28T18:12:33+09:00

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 31 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They did; the Z at the end denotes UTC.

[–] littleonescared@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

My point was not everyone is just at UTC zero but sure Z is also a timezone.

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 points 2 days ago

Most people communicate mostly with people in the same timezone's, partially because most countries only have one timezone.

[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

Microsecond precision is fine for most use cases, but I teach my kids to use nanoseconds.

[–] Artyom@lemm.ee 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It's a flexible standard. 2026-05-10T10:06:09.426792Z, 2026-05-10 10:06:09.426792Z, 2026-05-10 10:06:09.426792 , and 2026-05-10 all conform to the standard.

[–] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 3 days ago

ISO 8601/RFC-3339 (Unix Epoch also acceptable) gang reporting in.

[–] amlor@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago

I’m doing my part!

[–] trijste@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 days ago
[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

It's the only way that makes sense

[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Hello from Hungary ! We should also democratize the Surname GivenName format

[–] JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Szia. We should indeed.

[–] double_quack@lemm.ee 5 points 3 days ago

YYYY-MM-... well, ya know the deal...

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Anyone that gives me a document or receipt or invoice with a date formatted DD-MM-YYYY should have a tire iron swung at their thighs

Multiple swings if they can't decide on using DD-MM-YYYY or MM-DD-YYYY or DD-MM-YY or MM-DD-YY or YY-MM-DD or YY-DD-MM

[–] Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 1 points 2 days ago

I rather have somebody write their invoices at DD-MM-YYYY cause there is a bigger chance it will most likely not be an invoice from a North American company which notriously cannot make proper invoices and most software that actually scans and processes invoices is based on the European standaard DD-MM-YYYY or on ISO8601.

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Btw this is how it’s used in some countries (eg., Hungary, Japan, China, and a few others from Asia). All other date formats are very strange and confusing for us

[–] tisktisk@piefed.social 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

As a big ISO 8601 guy myself, I request explanation of this 9001 addition? Never heard of it till now and am optimistic

[–] nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 3 days ago

Seconded. Not coming up with much when trying to find out more about it.

Quality Management Systems, unsure what it has to do with 8601, but guess the fanboy venn diagram overlaps

[–] nomecks@lemmy.wtf -4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

DD-MM-YYYY-HH-MM-SS

Makes no sense!

[–] BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I prefer the alphabetical date format DD-HH-MM-SS-mm-yy for maximum confusion

[–] tisktisk@piefed.social 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Were you mostly joking or is there a utility to this? Genuinely curious as someone that finds confusing things slightly more memorable in a really backwards way

[–] BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 days ago

Yes I was joking, get a random timestamp in this format and you have no idea what it's referring to.

DD:HH:MM:SS:mm:yy is even better because it could be a MAC address.