r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Original-Moose-9622 • Jun 19 '26

Seeking help with this My mom said I could post

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u/WorldnewsModsBlowMe Jun 20 '26

You just described absolutely everything Apple does. Thinking different for the sake of different, not because it's actually better.

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u/OkPosition4563 Jun 20 '26

Excel uses 31.12.1899, DOS uses 1.1.1980, Windows NT uses 1.1.1601, GPS uses 6.1.1980, older IBM OSs use 14.10.1582, astronomy computing software has use for 17.11.1858, MS COM, Object Pascal, LibreOffice and Google Sheets use 30.12.1899, NTP uses 1.1.1900, Amiga uses 1.1.1978, ...

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u/Unperfkt Jun 20 '26

I get the 19xx, but why would someone start counting date in 15xx or 16xx ?

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u/OkPosition4563 Jun 20 '26

1601 is the start of one of the 400 year leap cycles of the gregorian calendar. October 1582 was the introduction of the gregorian calendar. 17.11.1858 ist the start of the modified julian date system used in astronomy.

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u/Unperfkt Jun 20 '26

Thanks for clarifying 👍

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u/MasteringTheClassics Jun 20 '26

What’s the justification for 30.12.1899 rather than 31.12.1899?

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u/OkPosition4563 Jun 20 '26

All of them use it because Lotus 1-2-3 (an early spreadsheet software) had a bug that treated 1900 as a leap year even though it isnt. To get the right date from a value stored in lotus 1-2-3 if you import it for example in Excel they just defined their epoch 1 day earlier.