Another way to clear the screen



  • A little something I found in the C code for a handheld scanner: 

    void clrscr(void)
    {
    gotoxy(0,0); printf("                    ");
    gotoxy(0,1); printf("                    ");
    gotoxy(0,2); printf("                    ");
    gotoxy(0,3); printf("                    ");
    gotoxy(0,4); printf("                    ");
    gotoxy(0,5); printf("                    ");
    gotoxy(0,6); printf("                    ");
    gotoxy(0,7); printf("                    ");
    gotoxy(0,0);      
    }



  • Is there a "proper" way to do it on that platform? That seems like perfectly reasonable code in the absence of anything better.



  • @rbowes said:

    Is there a "proper" way to do it on that platform? That seems like perfectly reasonable code in the absence of anything better.

    Assuming that the C compiler for the handheld platform does not support loops, yes. 



  • Depends entirely on the SDK, but there are a number of handheld scanners that have no other way of doing it.

    I grew up in the wonderful OO-era of software development, creating nice objects, documenting it all (a bit, I'm not perfect) etc. Imagine my pain when I have to fix something in our stone-age Nippon Denso procedural goto's-everywhere comments-nowhere proprietary basic-variant scanner application :(



  • @pnieuwkamp said:

    Depends entirely on the SDK, but there are a number of handheld scanners that have no other way of doing it.

    I grew up in the wonderful OO-era of software development, creating nice objects, documenting it all (a bit, I'm not perfect) etc. Imagine my pain when I have to fix something in our stone-age Nippon Denso procedural goto's-everywhere comments-nowhere proprietary basic-variant scanner application :(

    Why don't you just throw out those stone-age Densos and buy some nice new WinCE-powered handheld terminals?  



  • Why don't you just throw out those stone-age Densos and buy some nice new WinCE-powered handheld terminals?

    Because the customer won't shell out another 2500 bucks per device for something that works perfectly (average # of bug reports: < 1 per year). All the new stuff is being done on Mobile Compia M3's ( http://www.mobilecompia.co.kr/en/pro01.htm ).



  • @pnieuwkamp said:

    Why don't you just throw out those stone-age Densos and buy some nice new WinCE-powered handheld terminals?

    Because the customer won't shell out another 2500 bucks per device for something that works perfectly (average # of bug reports: < 1 per year). All the new stuff is being done on Mobile Compia M3's ( http://www.mobilecompia.co.kr/en/pro01.htm ).

    2500 bucks per device is quite a lot. Why not take a look at cheaper devices like the Symbol MC50, which costs approximately 1000 USD?

    I know, it's still a lot of money, but on the other hand, software maintenance is a nightmare on those legacy devices...



  • I do not know what we are paying, I only know roughly what we charge for them. Besides, I'm not the decisionmaker here, I just program whatever the higher powers want done.

     Fortunately, the Denso's don't require much maintenance, we've had 2 issues / bug reports in the last 2.5 year. Oh, and a few that were not reproducible (reset the device and the problem was gone), so they were dismissed as incidental.

    The PC-side had more issues, mainly with the direct serial port access, but with the shiny new DLL (instead of ShellExec'ing an .exe, another improvement \o/ though you still have to pass a command-line-parameters-like string to it: "+p1 +b9600 drive:\path\filetoupload", I don't know if the DLL supports log filenames already, the exe didn't) this was resolved...
     



  • I forgot... users have to load/unload the devices through a serial cable... Alright, here is the business case (I know you are not the decision maker, but anyway...):

    Let's assume every worker spends half an hour per day waiting for the load/unload of the device. At the end of the year, he has waited for approx. 100 hours. 

    Assuming a work hour costs 15 EUR, that's 1500 Euros per year - enough to buy a shiny new device for every worker which uses WLAN for data transfer, therefore no more waiting. Plus a lot of other advantages, like always-up-to-date data.



  • Generally, they only have to upload about 100 lines of 15 bytes each, in batch. 1500 bytes, even at only 9600 baud, takes 1,5 seconds. Add a bit of overhead, say 10 seconds.

    Put your scanner on the cradle, take of your jacket, pick up the scanner 'cause it's done...

    WLAN isn't an advantage, as they are used on the road, either to scan orders (sales representatives) or locations (security, proof for the customer they were there (or at least, scanned the appropriate barcode, which is why we also use GPS in the new devices)).

    But, even if it were 30 minutes sou you'd have a 1 year ROI for the devices itself, you'd still have the development costs, to begin from scratch and hope it works as flawlessly as the Denso.



  • @pnieuwkamp said:

    1500 bytes, even at only 9600 baud, takes 1,5 seconds.

     

    Well which one is it?  1 or 5 ?  You Euros and your silly decimal points that look like commas...

    ;)

     



  • And even if they were doing something that takes a half-hour to run, you're assuming that (1) they would do nothing else useful during that time, and (2) they would not find some other way to waste a half-hour if you eliminated the wait time.  (These assumptions may or may not be true, depending on your employees.)

     



  • Oh, and a cousin of (2):  "okay, the transfer's started, this would be a good time for me to take that lunch / coffee break / smoke break that I was gonna do anyway at some point"




  • @pnieuwkamp said:

    Generally, they only have to upload about 100 lines of 15 bytes each, in batch. 1500 bytes, even at only 9600 baud, takes 1,5 seconds. Add a bit of overhead, say 10 seconds.

    Put your scanner on the cradle, take of your jacket, pick up the scanner 'cause it's done...

    Go to the PC, wait till the other guy in front of you is finished, go back to the working place ...

     

    WLAN isn't an advantage, as they are used on the road, either to scan orders (sales representatives) or locations (security, proof for the customer they were there (or at least, scanned the appropriate barcode, which is why we also use GPS in the new devices)).

    But, even if it were 30 minutes sou you'd have a 1 year ROI for the devices itself, you'd still have the development costs, to begin from scratch and hope it works as flawlessly as the Denso.

    So it could be GPRS instead of WLAN, then? No, I'm not a salesman for those devices ;-)

    But no, they will never ever work as flawlessly as the Denso.  (my experience of ~3 years with WinCE industrial terminals used for warehouse management, different types and brands...)
     



  • @shadowman said:

    Well which one is it?  1 or 5 ?  You Euros and your silly decimal points that look like commas...

    ;)

    Don't get me started on that ridiculous mm-dd-yyyy DateTimeFormat. Two thirds of the times (well, as it's usually for my birthday, more often) I have to fill in a date online I don't even know which one it expects, days first or months first. If it accepts 13, it's the day-field (or a wtf).

    ;) 



  • @pnieuwkamp said:

    Don't get me started on that ridiculous mm-dd-yyyy DateTimeFormat. Two thirds of the times (well, as it's usually for my birthday, more often) I have to fill in a date online I don't even know which one it expects, days first or months first. If it accepts 13, it's the day-field (or a wtf).


    Better than the stupid dd/mm/yyyy. WhoTF talks out the date as "21st February, 2007" ?? The sorting is also horrendous that way. It would be by DAY, so they'd all be scattered about (January 1, followed by February 1, etc). With mm/dd/yyyy, it at least gets a month's worth in a group.

    In software development, I format everything (on the screen) in the truely sortable way: yyyy/mm/dd . Everything is perfectly chronological that way - even with string sorting. Obviously I store it as DateTime in a database or whatnot. I even write it on documents that don't have a mandated format. :-D



  • @ammoQ said:

    @pnieuwkamp said:

    Depends entirely on the SDK, but there are a number of handheld scanners that have no other way of doing it.

    I grew up in the wonderful OO-era of software development, creating nice objects, documenting it all (a bit, I'm not perfect) etc. Imagine my pain when I have to fix something in our stone-age Nippon Denso procedural goto's-everywhere comments-nowhere proprietary basic-variant scanner application :(

    Why don't you just throw out those stone-age Densos and buy some nice new WinCE-powered handheld terminals?  

    How about "because wince is an unholy monstrosity"? Handhelds like that make paper look attractive. 



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    Better than the stupid dd/mm/yyyy. WhoTF talks out the date as "21st February, 2007" ??
    All of Europe. Don't know about Afrika, South-Amerika, Asia, Canada or whatever the English name for the continent with Australia. Oh, and without  the "th", just the number.

    The sorting is also horrendous that way. It would be by DAY, so they'd all be scattered about (January 1, followed by February 1, etc). With mm/dd/yyyy, it at least gets a month's worth in a group.
    Yes, let's use an alphabetical stringsort which only does a moderately better job than dd/mm/yyyy to define our day-to-day format with little or nothing to do with stringsorting.

    If you're worried about sorting strings you should, as you said, use yyyy/mm/dd (or better yet, yyyy-mm-dd, but let's not go into dateseparators just now). mm/dd/yyyy isn't even Endian-correct. At least dd/mm/yyyy and yyyy/mm/dd is little and big Endian. You don't write the time as hh🇸🇸mm do you? I can't think of any other 3-number right now, but little and big endian makes sense,  medium>small>big endian doesn't.

    It's probably just what you're used to. Who am I to (want to) change your life-time habit? It's just that mm/dd/yyyy makes absolutely no sense to me. mm/dd? Maybe. But if you insist on using that notation, at least prefix the year instead of appending it, so you have a logical big-to-small order.
     



  • @pnieuwkamp said:

    @AbbydonKrafts said:

    Better than the stupid dd/mm/yyyy. WhoTF talks out the date as "21st February, 2007" ??
    All of Europe. Don't know about Afrika, South-Amerika, Asia, Canada or whatever the English name for the continent with Australia. Oh, and without  the "th", just the number.

    Just for completeness, in English (as opposed to American, etc) it's usually spoken as "the 21st of February, 2007". 



  • The American way of saying dates has always bewildered and scared me. Every time I hear someone say "February 2" I just think "What, a sequel already? Isn't one February enough for these people??". "The 2nd [day] of February", makes much ore sense! Anyway, as long as anyone is interested in sorting, yyyy-mm-dd is the ONLY way to do it, everything is sorted into strict chronological order.

    Personally I support decimalising the calendar completely, preferably doing away with months, weeks, years, and days entirely. What a nonsense the current system is. 365 / 12 / (31|30|29|28) / 7 / 24 / 60 / 60 is just stupid, hard to work, with, and doesn't work well with other planets or our own planet's changing orbit.

    But back to the original topic, yeah that sucks. Until recently I had the misfortune of having to maintain a load of 1981-5 handhelds running a BASIC app. *Unfortunately* they all slowly stopped working for some reason, oh no what a shame.



  • @pnieuwkamp said:

    Don't know about Afrika, South-Amerika, Asia, Canada or whatever the English name for the continent with Australia.

    The continent [i]is[/i] Australia. 



  • @RayS said:

    The American way of saying dates has always bewildered and scared me. Every time I hear someone say "February 2" I just think "What, a sequel already? Isn't one February enough for these people??". "The 2nd [day] of February", makes much ore sense! Anyway, as long as anyone is interested in sorting, yyyy-mm-dd is the ONLY way to do it, everything is sorted into strict chronological order.

     

    I don't know how many times you've heard an American say a date but February 2, 1997 would be said "February second, nineteen ninety-seven" not "February two, blah blah blah."  no one says the straight number.  first, second, third, fourth, fifth, etc.



  • @Zemyla said:

    @pnieuwkamp said:

    Don't know about Afrika, South-Amerika, Asia, Canada or whatever the English name for the continent with Australia.

    The continent [i]is[/i] Australia. 

    The other option was Oceania, as Australia is also a country. I guess the Americans (as in: USA) aren't the only ones to mistake their country for a continent :P "What do you mean, North America? $southern-state-of-the-USA is in the south!"



  • Sorry, replace hear with read, and say with write.

    I'm sure that you guys love things that way round and good luck to you for doing so, but most of the world just looks on bemused, quibbling instead over using ., /, -, or [x] as a delimiter, and if leading zeros are desirable. I say yes. :-)



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    Better than the stupid dd/mm/yyyy. WhoTF talks out the date as "21st February, 2007" ??

    @pnieuwkamp said:

    All of Europe. Don't know about Afrika, South-Amerika, Asia, Canada or whatever the English name for the continent with Australia.

     In South America we use the more sensible approach, just like the Europeans: dd/mm/yy or dd-mm-yy or with yyyy. It just makes sense. Besides, I know you Americans (from the US) think you have the best method for everything, but you have to realise that nobody besides you says the date like this: "February nineteen, 1997". Everyone else says "the 19th of February, 1997". Just like nobody else uses the Fahrenheit scale, or just like nobody else uses quarts.

     It just baffles me that you could possibly argue that mm/dd/yyyy is more sensible - there's no chronological order there. Big to small or small to big - makes sense, doesn't it?
     



  • Ok, I'm confused (I love how wildly off-topic this forum gets).  Just for the record, here's how I think people would speak February 21, 2007:

    America: "February twenty-first, two thousand seven"
    Europe: "the twenty-first of February, two thousand seven"

    I think the first form makes sense to us because there are multiple days with the number 21, but only one month named February.

    @pnieuwkamp said:

    @AbbydonKrafts said:

    Better than the stupid dd/mm/yyyy. WhoTF talks out the date as "21st February, 2007" ??
    All of Europe. Don't know about Afrika, South-Amerika, Asia, Canada or whatever the English name for the continent with Australia. Oh, and without  the "th", just the number.


    So does that mean you say "twenty-one February, two thousand seven"?



  • @Cap'n Steve said:

    America: "February twenty-first, two thousand seven"
    Europe: "the twenty-first of February, two thousand seven"

    I think the first form makes sense to us because there are multiple days with the number 21, but only one month named February.

    How about if you apply that to time? There's only one 3PM in the day, but lots of 25th minutes of the hour in a day. Should we therefore write that as 25:3PM. No, pretty much every sane person in the world would write 3:25PM (or even more correctly, 15:25 ;) ). So really that arguement holds no water.

     
    Then there is context to take into account, look how the dates are being used. The most commonly used dates will be within a week or so of today either way. The month name is spurious, you can. just say "The twenty first"
    The next most commonly used dates are within the same year, you append the month on the end for clarification "The twenty first of Feb"
    The least most commonly used dates, those in a different year, you again append extra info on the end "The twenty first of Feb, 2013"

    It works the same with time, albeit in reverse. The most immediately important part of the time is the hour, again with the least important details to the right, being gradually appended on as required.

    The general rule is left to right, appending on either less or more precise detail as needed, in any sane system. File paths? Check. Usenet? Check. Decimal numbers? Check. Postal addresses? Check. Dates/times in the majority of the world? Check... repeat ad nauseum.

    Other than the US date format, the only system I can think of that go against this are URIs ( e.g.http://4.3.2.1/5/6/7/8). Hoewever, even URIs have the excuse that it's two seperate things (identify the server, identify the file path) stuck together for convenience. Even mister interweb himself Tim Berners-Lee says that he got the domain system the wrong way round and wishes that he had done it properly. Being a slashdot link, they do go off the topic of domain names... into the US date format.

    Just about every other commonly used system, in just about every major culture, goes wholey L>R or R>L. Every western culture uses dd%mm%yy other than the US. There may very well be a good reason for that, don't'cha think. 

     



  • Owing to the sillyness of a certain country in North America, I have in recent years taken to writing dates as "22 Feb 07" or similar, and have seen websites that use the month TLAs in dropdown boxes. It's unambiguous. True, a little awkward for non-English speakers, but the month names in most other European languages are similar enough.

    I suspect the US system probably originates from SAYING dates as "February the twenty-second" rather than "The twenty-second of february". While it was just words, there was no problem, but once the words are shortened to numbers, confusion reigns.



  • @RayS said:

    @Cap'n Steve said:

    America: "February twenty-first, two thousand seven"
    Europe: "the twenty-first of February, two thousand seven"

    I think the first form makes sense to us because there are multiple days with the number 21, but only one month named February.

    How about if you apply that to time? There's only one 3PM in the day, but lots of 25th minutes of the hour in a day. Should we therefore write that as 25:3PM. No, pretty much every sane person in the world would write 3:25PM (or even more correctly, 15:25 ;) ). So really that arguement holds no water.


    Then there is context to take into account, look how the dates are being used. The most commonly used dates will be within a week or so of today either way. The month name is spurious, you can. just say "The twenty first"
    The next most commonly used dates are within the same year, you append the month on the end for clarification "The twenty first of Feb"
    The least most commonly used dates, those in a different year, you again append extra info on the end "The twenty first of Feb, 2013"

    It works the same with time, albeit in reverse. The most immediately important part of the time is the hour, again with the least important details to the right, being gradually appended on as required.

    The general rule is left to right, appending on either less or more precise detail as needed, in any sane system. File paths? Check. Usenet? Check. Decimal numbers? Check. Postal addresses? Check. Dates/times in the majority of the world? Check... repeat ad nauseum.

    Other than the US date format, the only system I can think of that go against this are URIs ( e.g.http://4.3.2.1/5/6/7/8). Hoewever, even URIs have the excuse that it's two seperate things (identify the server, identify the file path) stuck together for convenience. Even mister interweb himself Tim Berners-Lee says that he got the domain system the wrong way round and wishes that he had done it properly. Being a slashdot link, they do go off the topic of domain names... into the US date format.

    Just about every other commonly used system, in just about every major culture, goes wholey L>R or R>L. Every western culture uses dd%mm%yy other than the US. There may very well be a good reason for that, don't'cha think. 

     

    You sort of just proved a point up there at the top, dude.. no, we don't say 25:3PM. Why? Cause hours are bigger than minutes. (longer)

    So, by that logic, saying "september 11th, 2007" makes more sense than "11th of september, 2007"

    heh.

    When i hear a date, i want to hear month, day. I'll assume it's the same year as we're in until the end of the year (and in context you can even tell if they are referring to the past or future month of march, say).

    someone saying "12th of august" to me... i'd sneer at them for being a snob.

     

    and i ALWAYS write the date as year - month - day... old programming lay-over. (name your logs this way and you'll always be in the proper order!)

    Just about every other commonly used system, in just about every major culture, goes wholey L>R or R>L. Every western culture uses dd%mm%yy other than the US. There may very well be a good reason for that, don't'cha think. 

    HAHAHA so you're saying it again here... the rest of the world should be saying (according to your logic) "2007, march 15th..."

    Yet we americans who just say "march 15th" and know that we're talking about 2007... are the wrong ones? even though it is L to R? Just like our reading of books, the time, telephone numbers, price tags? the rest of the world says "the fifteenth of march" and yet they read their phone numbers L to R, Price tags are L to R... Yet we're backwards. Ok dude. you lost me.

    LEWL!



  • I think it's funny the sincere amount of elitism on these types of topics.  Especially when people tell others that they are "wrong" about how they refer to date/time.

    Every western culture uses dd%mm%yy other than the US. There may very well be a good reason for that, don't'cha think. 

    Can you provide a definitive argument that demonstrates there's a functional loss regardless of the way you refer to a date?  I strongly believe you cannot.



  • To disclaim:

    I'm meaning culturally specific references to date/time.  In situations where you're storing the date/time - there may be functional losses or difficulties going from one to another, but that is niether here nor there.



  • @GeneWitch said:

    You sort of just proved a point up there at the top, dude.. no, we don't say 25:3PM. Why? Cause hours are bigger than minutes. (longer)

    So, by that logic, saying "september 11th, 2007" makes more sense than "11th of september, 2007"

    No, if you follow that logic, you'd be saying 2007, September 11th.

    @GeneWitch said:

    someone saying "12th of august" to me... i'd sneer at them for being a snob.

    So because someone is from a different culture to you, they're a snob? riiiiight...

     

    Shadowwolf - no functional difference at all. Either way. Both work just as well if you're used to them, as would "2007 13th June", or "May 2005 3rd" or any other plan you can think of. Purely from an academic/logical structural POV, it's nonstandard. Three units - small, medium large. No other commonly used system does anything other than SML or LMS.

    I don't see why so many people see it as a personal attack when you point out the obvious.. 



  • So because someone is from a different culture to you, they're a snob? riiiiight...

    If they said this to me where i live, ya. If i was in europe or some other area of the world, no.

     



  • PDP endian...



  • @RayS said:

    @GeneWitch said:

    You sort of just proved a point up there at the top, dude.. no, we don't say 25:3PM. Why? Cause hours are bigger than minutes. (longer)

    So, by that logic, saying "september 11th, 2007" makes more sense than "11th of september, 2007"

    No, if you follow that logic, you'd be saying 2007, September 11th.

    @GeneWitch said:

    someone saying "12th of august" to me... i'd sneer at them for being a snob.

    So because someone is from a different culture to you, they're a snob? riiiiight...

     

    Shadowwolf - no functional difference at all. Either way. Both work just as well if you're used to them, as would "2007 13th June", or "May 2005 3rd" or any other plan you can think of. Purely from an academic/logical structural POV, it's nonstandard. Three units - small, medium large. No other commonly used system does anything other than SML or LMS.

    I don't see why so many people see it as a personal attack when you point out the obvious.. 

    Then that demonstrates that no, there is no good reason.  Just cultural differences.

    Academically/Logically speaking nothing - you're clearly attempting to assert your way is superior, which it is not as you stated yourself.  Your "obvious" statement is just the prototypical euro-centric elitism.  Yes other people are being subjective and centric too, but I'm just making a point here that the entire argument is subjective.  You can't say one way is better than another.

    I live in the USA, I prefer HH:MM:PM & dd/mm/yy - so what?  It's just preference :)  Refering to a specific way of recording Time or Date as "Proper" is annoying.



  • @RayS said:

    @Cap'n Steve said:

    America: "February twenty-first, two thousand seven"
    Europe: "the twenty-first of February, two thousand seven"

    I think the first form makes sense to us because there are multiple days with the number 21, but only one month named February.

    How about if you apply that to time? There's only one 3PM in the day, but lots of 25th minutes of the hour in a day. Should we therefore write that as 25:3PM. No, pretty much every sane person in the world would write 3:25PM (or even more correctly, 15:25 ;) ). So really that arguement holds no water.



    You're saying the same thing that I am.  I think we want the month to be first for the same reason that everyone wants the hour to be first.

     
    @RayS said:

    Then there is context to take into account, look how the dates are being used. The most commonly used dates will be within a week or so of today either way. The month name is spurious, you can. just say "The twenty first"
    The next most commonly used dates are within the same year, you append the month on the end for clarification "The twenty first of Feb"
    The least most commonly used dates, those in a different year, you again append extra info on the end "The twenty first of Feb, 2013"


    Of course.  That's what Americans do too, but for the sake of discussion we're talking about complete dates.



  • @ShadowWolf said:

    @RayS said:
    @GeneWitch said:

    You sort of just proved a point up there at the top, dude.. no, we don't say 25:3PM. Why? Cause hours are bigger than minutes. (longer)

    So, by that logic, saying "september 11th, 2007" makes more sense than "11th of september, 2007"

    No, if you follow that logic, you'd be saying 2007, September 11th.

    @GeneWitch said:

    someone saying "12th of august" to me... i'd sneer at them for being a snob.

    So because someone is from a different culture to you, they're a snob? riiiiight...

     

    Shadowwolf - no functional difference at all. Either way. Both work just as well if you're used to them, as would "2007 13th June", or "May 2005 3rd" or any other plan you can think of. Purely from an academic/logical structural POV, it's nonstandard. Three units - small, medium large. No other commonly used system does anything other than SML or LMS.

    I don't see why so many people see it as a personal attack when you point out the obvious.. 

    Then that demonstrates that no, there is no good reason.  Just cultural differences.

    Academically/Logically speaking nothing - you're clearly attempting to assert your way is superior, which it is not as you stated yourself.  Your "obvious" statement is just the prototypical euro-centric elitism.  Yes other people are being subjective and centric too, but I'm just making a point here that the entire argument is subjective.  You can't say one way is better than another.

    I live in the USA, I prefer HH:MM:PM & dd/mm/yy - so what?  It's just preference :)  Refering to a specific way of recording Time or Date as "Proper" is annoying.

     The problem with these cultural differences is that 01/06/2007 is ambiguous.  You don't know if I'm English or American, so you don't know if you've missed my birthday this year or if you still have a chance of some birthday cake in a few months.  There's no problem if the context is clear but it would be good to agree on international standards.



  • @ShadowWolf said:

    Then that demonstrates that no, there is no good reason.  Just cultural differences.

    Academically/Logically speaking nothing - you're clearly attempting to assert your way is superior, which it is not as you stated yourself.  Your "obvious" statement is just the prototypical euro-centric elitism.  Yes other people are being subjective and centric too, but I'm just making a point here that the entire argument is subjective.  You can't say one way is better than another.

    Oh come on. Things like this (http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9911/10/orbiter.02/) happen. And if everyone uses their own little system, they will continue to happen and no one can ever cooperate. The only way out of these standardization issues is by all agreeing to use a system that is most consistent internally and has widest adoption already. I'd think dd-mm-yyyy is both more logical from an a priori point of view, and that the rest of the world is bigger than the Usa, so it is better.
     



  • @raf said:

     In South America we use the more sensible approach, just like the Europeans: dd/mm/yy or dd-mm-yy or with yyyy. It just makes sense. Besides, I know you Americans (from the US) think you have the best method for everything, but you have to realise that nobody besides you says the date like this: "February nineteen, 1997". Everyone else says "the 19th of February, 1997". Just like nobody else uses the Fahrenheit scale, or just like nobody else uses quarts.

     It just baffles me that you could possibly argue that mm/dd/yyyy is more sensible - there's no chronological order there. Big to small or small to big - makes sense, doesn't it?
     

    I guess it's just what you're used to, hence the quarts, gallons, miles, pounds, inches, and yards here in the US.  When you really think about it, dd/mm/yyyy actually makes more sense.  As does the metric system -- waaaay easier to learn.  Although I'm not completely sold on the Celsius temp scale.

    As for me, I say "February 2007 23." 

    For my next project, metric time! "I'll meet you at the store in 20 microyears." 



  • @bouk said:

    @ShadowWolf said:

    Then that demonstrates that no, there is no good reason.  Just cultural differences.

    Academically/Logically speaking nothing - you're clearly attempting to assert your way is superior, which it is not as you stated yourself.  Your "obvious" statement is just the prototypical euro-centric elitism.  Yes other people are being subjective and centric too, but I'm just making a point here that the entire argument is subjective.  You can't say one way is better than another.

    Oh come on. Things like this (http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9911/10/orbiter.02/) happen. And if everyone uses their own little system, they will continue to happen and no one can ever cooperate. The only way out of these standardization issues is by all agreeing to use a system that is most consistent internally and has widest adoption already. I'd think dd-mm-yyyy is both more logical from an a priori point of view, and that the rest of the world is bigger than the Usa, so it is better.
     

    The same argument can be made for language, driving styles, law systems, etc.  I'm sure if you spent 30 seconds on CNN.com, you'd find a story of someone experiencing a tragedy of some form as a result of a cultural difference.  Last I checked, people still cooperate.



  • @GeneWitch said:

    someone saying "12th of august" to me... i'd sneer at them for being a snob.

    What if they said "4th of July"? :-)

    That's one of the rare dates that we USAicans seem to still use "DDth of MMM" instead of "MMM DDth".

    davidh



  • @psiphiorg said:

    @GeneWitch said:
    someone saying "12th of august" to me... i'd sneer at them for being a snob.

    What if they said "4th of July"? :-)

    That's one of the rare dates that we USAicans seem to still use "DDth of MMM" instead of "MMM DDth".

    davidh

    We're just rubbing it in to the English. :-D


Log in to reply