A beautiful property of using ints to represent dates is that you can manipulate them using simple arithmetic. For example, if you want to refer to noon-time on 20200806, you can simply divide the day in two and write it as 10100403. An elegant, DRY solution to a perennial problem.

I don’t get this? What does 10100403 mean?

The poster is gently teasing the idea that integers like 20200806 are a reasonable way to to represent dates. Dividing 20200806 by 2, we get 10100403, representing the half-way point of the day (noon-time). Of course it's nonsense.

I’ve been had

It’s beautiful. Just mod 7 to find the day of the week.

Excellent example. Honestly, I have no idea why the concept hasn't caught on yet.

(I'd love to discuss this further... I'll be back on HN later tonight, sometime around 16834005.)

Human readability sometimes matters.

The integer 20200806 is chosen solely for the purpose of human readability. If you actually wanted to store a date as an integer, you'd use the Julian day.

what human can't parse that? Sure it might take a half a second longer but it's hardly confusing.

For those of us whose professional lives sometimes require staring at directory listings full of filenames like "output-200003021342"... for the love of God, please just put the dashes in.

I have an infinite number of dashes, I'll send you a lifetime supply!

greatideainthesameveinivedecidedtoforgospacesandpunctuationaswellbecauseitsavesspaceaswellaswearandtearonthekeyboard