title: Epoch or iso8601 date format?
body: <p>For passing times in JSON to/from a web API, why would I choose to use an ISO8601 string instead of simply the UTC epoch value?  For example, both of these are the same:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Epoch = 1511324473
  iso8601 =   2017-11-22T04:21:13Z
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The epoch value is obviously shorter in length, which is always good for mobile data usage, and it's pretty simple to convert between epoch values and the language's local Date type variable.</p>
  
  <p>I'm just not seeing the benefit to using an ISO string value.</p>