Decimal Places: Let's Bring Them Back

[jayandstacey]

If a menu item costs $18.50, then it costs $18.50,

Not $18.5

Enough.

From now on, im going to request a "fill in" for the missing digit. "Oh, fifty? OK, great, thanks for that clarification. Because it didn't say that and I wasn't 100% sure with the missing digit. I mean, I guess I was 90% sure, because the cents could have only been 50 or 51 or 52 or 53 or 54 or 55 or 56 or 57 or 58 or 59 - not any of the other possibilities like 43 cents, or 89. Don't get me wrong, I was thankful for the 5. It let me know what neighborhood we were in, you know, the ballpark amount of pennies for that dish. But it just wasn't quite enough to get us there, you know? Just a little shy..."

[DonRocks]

If a menu item costs $18.50, then it costs $18.50,

Not $18.5

Enough.

From now on, im going to request a "fill in" for the missing digit. "Oh, fifty? OK, great, thanks for that clarification. Because it didn't say that and I wasn't 100% sure with the missing digit. I mean, I guess I was 90% sure, because the cents could have only been 50 or 51 or 52 or 53 or 54 or 55 or 56 or 57 or 58 or 59 - not any of the other possibilities like 43 cents, or 89. Don't get me wrong, I was thankful for the 5. It let me know what neighborhood we were in, you know, the ballpark amount of pennies for that dish. But it just wasn't quite enough to get us there, you know? Just a little shy..."

What about:

18.

or

Eighteen Dollars and Ninety-Five Cents

?

I sometimes wonder if I'm the only person in the world who fills in leading zeros when writing dates, i.e., today is 01/08/16, because everything lines up so neatly that way, and it really bothers me *not* to do it. People complain about the way I title, tag, and link posts, but they just don't realize: I'm seriously fucked up.

And I absolutely bristle at writing four-digit years - what's the point? That question is asked in earnest: I've never understood it except for in computer programs when 2000 needs to be greater-than 1999 - that makes perfect sense to me, and I understand it completely. But filling out forms? To heck with that! Write a twenty-line computer program to convert the damned year! Here, I'll do it for you right now:

IF YEAR > '40'

    PREPEND '19'

ELSE

    PREPEND '20'

Not twenty lines; four lines. Depending on how confident you are in the longevity of your program, you can change '40' to '50'.

Okay, there's the birth-year issue, fine, but that's not hard, come on. And do you see how neatly my statements align with one another? Well?!?!?!?! DO YOU?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[jayandstacey]

When building a document storage/archive solution, one must balance the sorting and retrieving features against the "user pain" aspect, as an archive is worth zippity if users don't put things in it. In a recent such exercise, we judged usability so high that in fact we decided on no unique archival tool at all. Instead, we just used Windows file system, but with a simple naming convention.

When naming files or folders in Windows, a date is not recognized - but a "last edited" date is automatically captured.

So let's say you want to save a batch of documents related to a project and you want the project folder to reflect the delivery date for the project. So your naming convention is (say): customer - delivery date - project manager

So now your folder looks like:

CustomerX - 1-9-15 - Bob Smith

But Windows won't sort this chronologically; it doesn't "know" that's a date. So you have to present the date in a way that Windows will sort chronologically as it is really just sorting alphabetically.

That requires two things:

-,YYYY-MM-DD format, and

- two digits always for DD and MM.

So the folder name above should instead be:

CustomerX - 2015-01-09 - Bob Smith

Viola!

To answer your question, yes.

[jayandstacey]

And to address the other item- sure, 2 digit years are fine. Though I'd like to think that something, anything (maybe?) I do might be viewed by someone soooo distant from me that they wonder (care) in what actual year that thing was made.

Unlikely. So two digits.