Go takes an interesting approach to parsing strings to time objects, and formatting time objects as strings. Instead of using codes like most languages to represent component parts of a date/time string representation—like %Y for a 4-digit year like “2011” or %b for an abbreviated month name like “Feb”—Go uses a mnemonic device: there is a standard time, which is: Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 MST 2006 (MST