Is it ok to insert NOW() into a VARCHAR column?

Question

This works fine in MySQL 5.6 but is it ok to do this and is it future-proof?

create table test (`test_column` varchar(100));
insert into test values (now());

Answer 1

Although we cannot always predict the future, MySQL has always, and likely always will use the ISO-8601 date format which is very well specified.

Storing a date value in a string column is a rather odd thing to do, especially if you want it to be a date or date-time. Use the appropriate column type, either DATE or DATETIME as native representation provides a lot of benefits: Faster indexing, lighter storage requirements, automatic validation, and compatibility with the various date functions MySQL has built-in.

I can't think of a good reason to represent at date as some arbitrary VARCHAR column in MySQL.