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Lon Lat makes more sense when the programmer organizes the way they think about geography by timezone or east/west hemisphere first; or if they consider a typical cylindrical projection and think to represent that very human-centric representation of earth's surface as x, y: x, being longitude, would be specified first. The first thing you know when given Longitude is approximately how out of sync the target is in their day/night cycle, and more broadly whether it's the eastern or western hemisphere.

Lat Lon makes more sense when the programmer organizes the way they think about geography in a more astronomical or climate-centric way first, by sun exposure. The first thing you know when given Latitude is north/south hemisphere, what season the target is in, and roughly (although depending on land masses and bodies of water and terrain) what the climate is probably like.

Lat/Lon is the traditional and historical standard way of expressing location. Why are programmers treating it as if it's a new, unsettled question, and deciding for themselves which order to use for their software?

Interesting that both WMS and WFS changed to lat/long in later versions of their specs. Maybe more people could take the hint.




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