thomq: Just as long as it was nothing to do with today being March 09 (03/09) instead of September 03 (09/03), t.i. the contract ending six months sooner than expected because of misreading dates.
Year.Month.Day (2017.03.08) would probably be better...maybe... I mean that's how time works: hour.minute.second
Wishbone: Both methods are sorted, just in opposite directions. I think only the US uses the arbitrary retarded rollercoaster that is month/day/year.
It really depends on what the intended usage is.
In every day life it makes more sense to have DD.MM.YYYY because in most cases the variable that changes most often is the day, like three days from now, or a week from now etc.
In archival use, it makes most sense to have YYYY.MM.DD because in most cases it is most helpful to first find the right years, and then finetune the search for an exact month and day.
As far as having the month first, yeah, that doesn't make any sense no matter how you look at it.