Another lesson that might be useful is not to assume that the week starts on a particular day.
I live in the UK and the general convention here is the the week on Monday. In find calendars (presumably designed in the US) that start on Sunday particularly frustrating and error-prone. Not being able to customise this is uncultured.
Different cultures have different conventions, and if a seven-day week is the norm then it start on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday [1]. And, of course, some cultures don't use a seven-day week.
> I live in the UK and the general convention here is the the week on Monday.
Uh, no. The work week starts on Monday, but the week starts on Sunday. The link you provide supports that.
I agree with everything else you say though. It's useful to know that some people don't work Fridays but do work Sundays, or some people have other customs.
Strange. I don't ever recall Sunday being used as the start of the week in the UK. I asked a few people here and they all said Monday. The two printed calendars I was able to find (a diary and a wallplanner) all use Monday. ISO 8601 also starts the week on Monday [1].
You are correct that the Wikipedia article I cited says that in the Judeo-Christian tradition the week starts on Sunday, but that is clearly for religious purposes. Since the UK is home to people of many religions and none, I'm not sure why you think that Sunday is normative.
Serious question: does it feel different if your week starts on Sunday? Do you feel like your week is bracketed by a non-work day at each end?
I've tried to set up my calendars to start on Monday, over the years. It makes sense, because the two major segments of my life, the work week and the weekend, are each displayed contiguously.
And yet I get confused. Probably because I've grown up with Sunday to Saturday calendars, and almost no one else does a Monday start calendar in the US.
And while thinking about this post, I wondered, would it make sense to display calendars with both? An eight day display, showing last Sunday, this week, and the coming weekend.
To answer your serious question: only if I stop to really think about it.
Sunday in my youth was a quiet day. Shops were closed. TV was dreadful. I did chores and prepared for the coming week. Saturday was a day off for fun, Sunday was a sort of day off, but for quiet preparation.
Now Saturday and Sunday are days off for fun; tv is better; shops are open. So, it feels as if the week starts on Monday.
Why limit to Sat-Mon? If one has to offer such a feature, might as well go all the way and make it an arbitrary day. One standard plus one variation can be special-cased, but with two variations you might as well code things properly.
I live in the UK and the general convention here is the the week on Monday. In find calendars (presumably designed in the US) that start on Sunday particularly frustrating and error-prone. Not being able to customise this is uncultured.
Different cultures have different conventions, and if a seven-day week is the norm then it start on Saturday, Sunday, or Monday [1]. And, of course, some cultures don't use a seven-day week.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_days_of_the_week#N...