Best format to save date?

[eluser]n0xie[/eluser]
One of the reasons I use date/datetime, is because of the extensive library of of MySQL functions that work with date/datetime. It's much easier to build queries in which you let the database calculate date differences, date substractions etc etc.

Take a look at the MySQL docs for an overview : http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/d...tions.html

Sure you could convert every timestamp to date on the fly, and then use these functions, but why do all that extra work?

Plus it's in a much more human readable form. One of the many design patterns states, that you write your code for humans, not for computers. I would like to understand what's going on if I look back on some code in a year or so without having to decipher all the necessary steps to convert timestamp to 'normal' dates.