Panic in the Year Zero Zero
Dazzle Dates
What is Human Readable? What is Computer Readable?
Panic in the Year Zero Zero
What is Human Readable? What is Computer Readable?
It is commonly reported that while computers will be confused when the YY digits roll over, human beings are smart enough to understand. This is an ignorant oversimplification.
Humans and machines each have their strengths and weeknesses. A computer will (generally) do as it is told. A computer told that these two digits represent yyyy-1900 will obediently believe that, to the point of believing the year 1900 has returned. A human will usually be smart enough to know year 1900 has not returned.
But once the computer has been told to window those two digits into an apropriate window, the computer will continue to obediently do as it's told (including once the window becomes inapropriate). On the other hand, humans regularly forget bits of their programming and need to use their reasoning powers to reconstruct the programming.
Currently people need to deal with dates presented in various formats. If one sees the date 03-29-98, a human can deduce this is American MM-DD-YY format, because the date doesn't parse any other way. Similarly 29-03-98 is clearly European DD-MM-YY format, and 98-03-29 must be computerized YY-MM-DD format. Already DD-MM-YY cannot always be distinguished from MM-DD-YY for the first twelve days of each month, but come the year 2001 it get's much worse.
On the third day of February, 2001, the computerized date will be 01-02-03, the American date will be 02-03-01 and the European date will be 03-02-01, and people will look at those dates and go "gaaaggghhh". I call these Dazzle Dates.
Dazzle Dates will exist for 31 years from 2001 until 2031. Durring that period dates for human consumption written with two digit years will be highly confusing. Durring the Dazzle Date era, human misread and miskey rates will soar.
The only solution is four digit years.
Expiration dates are of great concern. I have a bottle with an expiration date of 01/00. Clearly that is January 2000. But two years later that expiration date will read 01/02. Does that say January 2002 or February 2001?
I would favor a law saying the the earliest concievable reading is the date the product must be taken off the shelf. For something as important as a product expiration date, we should settle for nothing less. If a manufacturer has no way of printing more digits with their archaic equipment, then they can freeze their expiration date for a month and print 12/01 instead of 01/02. The following year (if still not compliant) they can freeze the expiration date for two months; print 12/02 instead of 01/03 or 02/03. For a product with a two or more year shelf life, it might even be feasible to freeze the expiration date at 12/11 from 01/12 thru 11/12, and then carry on into year 2013 having waited out the problem.
Most manufacturers will find it expedient to fix their date printing hardware long before that.
But for dates that simply have to be right -- the date someone is to appear in court, the date ownership is transfered, the date a bill is due -- Dazzle Dates are unacceptable. No one can be expected to know for certain what "Date Due: 01-02-03" means.
I know you didn't want to expand those fields on your screens and your reports. Some of those formats are packed real tight.
Don't use Dazzle Dates -- Expand all human readable fields.
Panic in the Year Zero Zero