"One year ago" or "Last year" about humanizer

[droyad]

depends on what the actual calc is, IMHO:
"one year ago" != "last year"
OneYearAgo = DateTime.Today.AddYears(-2) < date && date <= DateTime.Today.AddYears(-1)
LastYear = DateTime.Today.Year - 1 == date.Year

If it is 1 Jan 2010, and someone said "[one|a] year ago" I would think Jan/Feb 2009. However "last year" is anytime in 2009.

[MehdiK]

Thanks @droyad. You summed it up nicely. Also consistent with the comments I am getting on twitter.

[RalphLavelle]

Yeah, they're two different things. You want to have both.

[MehdiK]

@RalphLavelle I don't think both would be useful. For example if it's 1st of January, do you want to get 'last year' for 24 hours ago or 'yesterday'? I would say the latter as it's more representative of that time (and less vague). What do you think?

[RalphLavelle]

I think from a "humanizing" perspective, people are more inclined to be vague about dates referring to something that happened more than a few months ago, and "last year" is more likely to be said than "7 months ago" under certain (year-spanning) circumstances. App could easily work out that they're different calendar years, and give "last year", otherwise "seven months ago" (within the same year). Or you could have an overload with a BeVague boolean to give people the choice of just how humanized they want things to get!