Re: Dates greater than 2039

Doug Palme wrote:

I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW we should be using 8 digit dates at the very least and preferrably a complete usa format.....but I can only control so much....we are getting there it is just taking a while to get the user base on board.....and that is the push back. They think that entering 052208 takes less time than 05222008 which is true but who the hell is counting micros when it comes to data entry....but that is the thinking.

Me, I can completely understand the users' position. It's painful to have to take extra time to do something you don't want to do. For example, I cannot abide having to take my hands off the keyboard to use my mouse in cases where I don't know of a keyboard shortcut. Sure it only takes a split second to do the mouse thing and get back to the keyboard, but I feel every microsecond of that split second as a separate stab to my psyche. Ok, that's an overstatement; it's one stab for every _milli_second, not every microsecond.

Just my opinion, but I think you should allow your users to have 2-digit years if they want, both for input and visual output, maybe even printer output. At the time they are entering the data, there is no question about what "08" means. The problem with 2-digit years comes when the date is somewhere permanent like a database file or a literal in program source.

Then you should convert them immediately to 4-digit year dates in your programs before you do any processing on them.