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Subject:Re: Days of the year From:Michael Lewis <lewism -at- BRANDLE -dot- COM -dot- AU> Date:Tue, 25 Nov 1997 10:56:48 +1100
What we have here is a simple example of a technical field
[mis-]adapting terminology from some other field. In computing, "julian
date" means "date expressed as year and day-of-year". There is, as far
as I know, no computing term for the conventional representation of a
date as "year, month-of-year, and day-of-month".
NB: a major benefit of julian dates is sorting into date sequence,
provided you put the year first. However, the same benefit is offered by
ISO date format yymmdd. I suspect the yyddd format arose from the same
byte-saving urge as the two-digit year, which has caused so much
expenditure on "getting it right the second time".
As tech communicators have been saying for years, "If you don't have
time to do it right, how will you find time to do it over?"
--
Michael Lewis
Brandle Pty Limited, Sydney, Australia
PO Box 1249, Strawberry Hills, NSW 2012
Tel +61-2-9310-2224 ... Fax +61-2-9310-5056
