Why doesn't time.Weekday follow ISO 8601?

[michael....@googlemail.com]

Currently time.Weekday is declared as follows:

// A Weekday specifies a day of the week (Sunday = 0, ...).

type Weekday int

const (

Sunday Weekday = iota

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

)

Sunday is declared as first day of week which is not accoding to the ISO 8601 standard that places monday as the first day of week.

A modification would also make some conversion code in time.ISOWeek() obsolete.

regards,

Michael

[Andy Balholm]

On Thursday, September 5, 2013 8:33:37 AM UTC-7, michael....@googlemail.com wrote:

Sunday is declared as first day of week which is not accoding to the ISO 8601 standard that places monday as the first day of week.

A modification would also make some conversion code in time.ISOWeek() obsolete.

I don't care what ISO says. Sunday is historically the first day of the week. History is as good a standard as some international committee.

[Jeremy Wall]

+1 What could possibly motivate making monday the first day? 

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[Michael Banzon]

The starting day of the week (along with starting week number of the year) would depend on what part of the world you ask.

This is why a ISO standard is good for reference - to stop silly discussions about culture and history.

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[egon]

Historically, it depends on the location http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week#Numbered_days_of_the_week.

+ egon

[Henrik Johansson]

Historically it should make sense that Monday is the first day what with the seventh day being the day of rest... Just saying ;-)

[egon]

This can't be modified due to Go compatibility guarantee. http://golang.org/doc/go1compat.html

I'm not able to access the actual ISO standard, but http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html says that the day counting starts from "1" ("A week starts with Monday (day 1)", so only Sunday value seems to be "wrong".

+ egon

[Andy Balholm]

On Thursday, September 5, 2013 9:11:36 AM UTC-7, Henrik Johansson wrote:

Historically it should make sense that Monday is the first day what with the seventh day being the day of rest... Just saying ;-)

That's probably why it got changed in some countries. Some people likely wanted Sunday to be the seventh day so that it would be the sabbath. But that's just as wrong as the missionaries who translated "sabbath" into Chinook jargon as "Sunday". 

The places I've run into where Monday is considered the first day of the week are Spanish-speaking. But the Spanish word for Saturday gives away the fact that it's really the sabbath, and thus the seventh day: "sabado".

P.S. I am not a Seventh-Day Adventist—even if I sound like one today. :-)

[Konstantin Khomoutov]

On Thu, 5 Sep 2013 09:47:28 -0700 (PDT)
Andy Balholm <andyb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Historically it should make sense that Monday is the first day what
> > with the seventh day being the day of rest... Just saying ;-)
> >
> That's probably why it got changed in some countries. Some people
> likely wanted Sunday to be the seventh day so that it would be the
> sabbath. But that's just as wrong as the missionaries who translated
> "sabbath" into Chinook jargon as "Sunday".
>
> The places I've run into where Monday is considered the first day of
> the week are Spanish-speaking. But the Spanish word for Saturday
> gives away the fact that it's really the sabbath, and thus the
> seventh day: "sabado".

In Russia (where I live), Monday is also the first day of week for as
long as I can remember. I mean, I do not think I ever managed to came
across any document which stated there were times when we had Sunday
the first day of our weeks. Honestly, I have always thought only USA
had Sunday as the first day of week (as well as being a holdout of
imperial measures as opposed to SI ones).

[Ibrahim M. Ghazal]

On 5 Sep 2013 20:03, "Konstantin Khomoutov" <flat...@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Honestly, I have always thought only USA
> had Sunday as the first day of week (as well as being a holdout of
> imperial measures as opposed to SI ones).

Some countries start their week on Sunday (weekend is Friday/Saturday), while others start on Saturday! (weekend is Thursday/Friday). I have personally lived in two such countries.

[John Nagle]

On 9/5/2013 8:33 AM,

michael....@googlemail.com wrote:
> Currently time.Weekday is declared as follows:
>
> // A Weekday specifies a day of the week (Sunday = 0, ...).

That's because Go was designed by old C people. The "tm"
structure in the old C library designed in the 1970s, when
US programmers never thought about internationalization,
has Sunday as 0.

Python's "date" object has both ".weekday()" (which has
the same values as C) and ".isoweekday()" which follows
ISO 8601.

Javascript's getDay function is, like C, 0..6, Sunday=0.

Java's "java.util.Calendar" type is locale-driven and
very general. Here's the documentation:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Calendar.html

John Nagle

[Andy Balholm]

On Thursday, September 5, 2013 10:03:03 AM UTC-7, Konstantin Khomoutov wrote:

In Russia (where I live), Monday is also the first day of week for as
long as I can remember.  I mean, I do not think I ever managed to came
across any document which stated there were times when we had Sunday
the first day of our weeks.

When I talk about history here, I'm not talking about the last few centuries. I hadn't been aware that Russia starts the week on Monday, but now I found this information online: 

When saints Cyril and Methodius brought Christianity to the Slavs, they took on the Greek tradition of numbering the days, but they numbered them from Monday instead of Sunday. (http://www.cjvlang.com/Dow/SunMon.html )

So as far as the history of Russia is concerned, Monday has always been the first day of the week. But the week is a lot older than Russia. :-) And until about 1500 years ago, there seems to have been little question that it started on Sunday.

[Brad Fitzpatrick]

Mnemonic: Sunday is 0 because there's zero agreement about what it should be.

 

--

[Svip]

On 5 September 2013 22:18, Brad Fitzpatrick <brad...@golang.org> wrote:

> Mnemonic: Sunday is 0 because there's zero agreement about what it should
> be.

In crontab, Sunday is both 0 and 7 as a compromise. You could extend
time.Weekday() like that.

[Brad Fitzpatrick]

Sounds good. First we'll have to add Perl 6 Junctions to Go.

[Svip]

To be quite honest, I don't really give a damn. In my country, Monday
is the first day of the week, because it is the more practical, as the
weekend is Saturday and Sunday, and it's nice to have 'weekend' being
*the* end. In German, the word for Wednesday literally means 'week
middle', but it is not in the middle anymore, because in Germany,
Monday is the first day of the week (as it is in most of Europe).

It's the same reason January is the first month of the year; for
management reasons. Makes more sense that we start working as soon as
a new week begins. Hell, it's why we use metric for measuring and
volumes, because it's just more practical.

If history is supposed to be a guideline, Go shouldn't even be using
the Gregorian Calendar.

[Kamil Kisiel]

Great, then we can do:

 if day := time.Weekday(); day == time.Sunday || time.OtherSunday { 

}

[Kamil Kisiel]

Of course I meant day == time.OtherSunday there 

[Svip]

I would propose to call it 'BetterSunday', but it works for me.

What will Go do when we decide to extend weeks to 9 days?

[Dan Kortschak]

In that case Monday is the first day of the week; Sunday is the zeroth day.

[Svip]

On 5 September 2013 22:37, Dan Kortschak <dan.ko...@adelaide.edu.au> wrote:

> In that case Monday is the first day of the week; Sunday is the zeroth day.

Yeah, that's not really how ordinal numbers work. There is not a
zeroth anything; it's always first. If something is 0-indexed, [0] is
still the first element. Ordinal, cardinal.

Unless you were making a joke, in which case I'll excuse myself.

[Dan Kortschak]

That's, OK.

[Brad Fitzpatrick]

Did you hear about the guy who got frozen to absolute zero?  He's 0K now.

That's, OK.

[egon]

After researching more about Sumerian week than I care to admit, I've come to the following understanding (which could be absolutely wrong). Essentially the day names and use of week is from Sumerian week ~2500BC (http://www.economist.com/node/895542?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/ar/thepowerofseven), although the article listed Babylonian gods used, but not the Sumerian, luckily there are several sources doing that (e.g. http://community.qlikview.com/blogs/qlikviewdesignblog/2012/10/23/ancient-gods). Nanna/Sin was the god of moon [Monday] and considered as the head of the pantheon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_(mythology)) and whose child was Utu/Shamash (god of sun [Sunday] ). This would suggest "the god of moon" would precede and be more important than "the god of sun". :)

+ egon