that way would work fine, too. i can look at that and tell what date we are talking about at a glance.
the real problem is displaying both the month and the day of the month as one- or two-digit numbers, which leads to ambiguity. display the month as a three-character string, and the year as a four-digit number, and we are all on the same page again.
it's pretty obvious that, if those standards were being followed all the time, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
i am talking about an ad hoc, fairly simple thing one can do, if one is writing user-facing code. it's a rule i follow, and i offered it up as something other people might want to try as well.
