Yesterday, HA wanted to know the date on which I had received a text message. I opened messages on my phone and read what it said:
“Monday 11:26” I said.
“Yes, but what date, she replied.”
Yeah. Who knows. I think today is Thursday, though I’m never too sure these days (ahhhh, retirement!). And it says Monday. How many days? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesay, Thursday — so four days, unless I’m off-by-one. And today’s date is… shit… the 30th? Maybe? So I subtract four and get 26.
Isn’t that the sort of things computers are supposed to be doing for me??
I see that all the time these days: in listings of file modification times in various OS’s, in email and SMS message times, in access logs. Yes, occasionally it’s useful to see that the message I’m looking for was sent “just now.” But that’s context sensitive. Time zone sensitive. It fails for screen shots. It fails in conversations.
What you want is a date and time. Relative measures might occasionally be helpful, but you always need the date and time.
I know how this happens. Amateur coders just can’t resist showing off that they know about cute little modules and libraries and “frameworks” that can turn “20250131@16:49” into “a few seconds ago” and think that users will be SOOOOO impressed with their skill and savvy.
No, your users are going to be too busy trying to figure out the number of days between “last Thursday” and today (say, Monday) and looking up the current date (say, February 2nd) then subtracting 4 days from the 2nd and figuring out how to cross the month boundary. Or switching to their calendar app and losing their place while they count the little squares in the overview. Or HORRORS having to reach for a PAPER calendar… all so you can show off what a genius script kiddie you are.
Stop it. Add your cutsie cruft if you must, but first give us real dates.
—2p