Personally I think it's a harmless but also not useful affectation (but I also think our chances of making it into the 10,000s as anything still using equivalent dates are slim at best).
The third point is especially bad for this article, where in context, the assumption should be that 0xxxx is octal, which isn't what he's actually doing at all.
So the upshot is that, rather than efficiently communicate what he's trying to say on this topic, he'd rather grind is axe on an unrelated topic. His choice, I guess, but I think it's a bad one. And an unfortunate one - he's got really good information on this topic, and his choice has hijacked us into talking about his date format.
And, thinking about it, it's not really the "long now". It's more like the "medium now". If it were the long now, he'd have several more zeroes in front.
That's what I thought it was too. This convention carried over into C and its derivatives today.
a priori, though, '01982' is not very likely to be intended as octal either
i decline to take responsibility for your emotions
i would appreciate it if you would stop harassing people because you don't like the date format they use, their haircut, or their clothes
