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Added note about “basic” format term, per thread in the comments.

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edit approved Sep 28, 2018 at 7:54

Basil Bourque

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Is there any reason at all?

Yes. Those pieces of software will be using ISO 8601.

ISO 8601 has a number of advantages over other date formats:

It's a standard with a spec document :)
It's unambiguous. mm/dd/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy can be confusing unless it's past the 13th day.
It lexicographically sorts into ascending time order, so no special date-sorting logic is required. This is especially useful in filenames, where lexicographical number sorting is often confusing (e.g. 1_file, 10_file, 2_file).
It mandates 4-digit year and zero padded month and year. This avoids the year 2000 problem and other ambiguities.

As for why ISO 8601 exists in the first place, it's because people were finding date-formats ambiguous and confusing when swapping data between countries/systems, and they needed something unambiguous.

For the rationale see the spec's introduction.

Although ISO Recommendations and Standards in this field have been available since 1971, different forms of numeric representation of dates and times have been in common use in different countries. Where such representations are interchanged across national boundaries misinterpretation of the significance of the numerals can occur, resulting in confusion and other consequential errors or losses. The purpose of this International Standard is to eliminate the risk of misinterpretation and to avoid the confusion and its consequences.

...

This International Standard retains the most commonly used expressions for date and time of the day and their representations from the earlier International Standards and provides unique representations for some new expressions used in practice. Its application in information interchange, especially between data processing systems and associated equipment will eliminate errors arising from misinterpretation and the costs these generate. The promotion of this International Standard will not only facilitate interchange across international boundaries, but will also improve the portability of software, and will ease problems of communication within an organization, as well as between organizations.

The standard defines “basic” variations as minimizing the use of delimiters. So, YYYYMMDD is the basic alternate to the extended format YYYY-MM-DD.

Is there any reason at all?

Yes. Those pieces of software will be using ISO 8601.

ISO 8601 has a number of advantages over other date formats:

It's a standard with a spec document :)
It's unambiguous. mm/dd/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy can be confusing unless it's past the 13th day.
It lexicographically sorts into ascending time order, so no special date-sorting logic is required. This is especially useful in filenames, where lexicographical number sorting is often confusing (e.g. 1_file, 10_file, 2_file).
It mandates 4-digit year and zero padded month and year. This avoids the year 2000 problem and other ambiguities.

For the rationale see the spec's introduction.

Although ISO Recommendations and Standards in this field have been available since 1971, different forms of numeric representation of dates and times have been in common use in different countries. Where such representations are interchanged across national boundaries misinterpretation of the significance of the numerals can occur, resulting in confusion and other consequential errors or losses. The purpose of this International Standard is to eliminate the risk of misinterpretation and to avoid the confusion and its consequences.

...

This International Standard retains the most commonly used expressions for date and time of the day and their representations from the earlier International Standards and provides unique representations for some new expressions used in practice. Its application in information interchange, especially between data processing systems and associated equipment will eliminate errors arising from misinterpretation and the costs these generate. The promotion of this International Standard will not only facilitate interchange across international boundaries, but will also improve the portability of software, and will ease problems of communication within an organization, as well as between organizations.

Is there any reason at all?

Yes. Those pieces of software will be using ISO 8601.

ISO 8601 has a number of advantages over other date formats:

It's a standard with a spec document :)
It's unambiguous. mm/dd/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy can be confusing unless it's past the 13th day.
It lexicographically sorts into ascending time order, so no special date-sorting logic is required. This is especially useful in filenames, where lexicographical number sorting is often confusing (e.g. 1_file, 10_file, 2_file).
It mandates 4-digit year and zero padded month and year. This avoids the year 2000 problem and other ambiguities.

For the rationale see the spec's introduction.

Although ISO Recommendations and Standards in this field have been available since 1971, different forms of numeric representation of dates and times have been in common use in different countries. Where such representations are interchanged across national boundaries misinterpretation of the significance of the numerals can occur, resulting in confusion and other consequential errors or losses. The purpose of this International Standard is to eliminate the risk of misinterpretation and to avoid the confusion and its consequences.

...

This International Standard retains the most commonly used expressions for date and time of the day and their representations from the earlier International Standards and provides unique representations for some new expressions used in practice. Its application in information interchange, especially between data processing systems and associated equipment will eliminate errors arising from misinterpretation and the costs these generate. The promotion of this International Standard will not only facilitate interchange across international boundaries, but will also improve the portability of software, and will ease problems of communication within an organization, as well as between organizations.

The standard defines “basic” variations as minimizing the use of delimiters. So, YYYYMMDD is the basic alternate to the extended format YYYY-MM-DD.

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answered Sep 25, 2018 at 13:53

Pod

Is there any reason at all?

Yes. Those pieces of software will be using ISO 8601.

ISO 8601 has a number of advantages over other date formats:

It's a standard with a spec document :)
It's unambiguous. mm/dd/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy can be confusing unless it's past the 13th day.
It lexicographically sorts into ascending time order, so no special date-sorting logic is required. This is especially useful in filenames, where lexicographical number sorting is often confusing (e.g. 1_file, 10_file, 2_file).
It mandates 4-digit year and zero padded month and year. This avoids the year 2000 problem and other ambiguities.

For the rationale see the spec's introduction.

Although ISO Recommendations and Standards in this field have been available since 1971, different forms of numeric representation of dates and times have been in common use in different countries. Where such representations are interchanged across national boundaries misinterpretation of the significance of the numerals can occur, resulting in confusion and other consequential errors or losses. The purpose of this International Standard is to eliminate the risk of misinterpretation and to avoid the confusion and its consequences.

...

This International Standard retains the most commonly used expressions for date and time of the day and their representations from the earlier International Standards and provides unique representations for some new expressions used in practice. Its application in information interchange, especially between data processing systems and associated equipment will eliminate errors arising from misinterpretation and the costs these generate. The promotion of this International Standard will not only facilitate interchange across international boundaries, but will also improve the portability of software, and will ease problems of communication within an organization, as well as between organizations.