Think of this from a human perspective, not purely an information one.

If you have a stream of content, usually short, in varying formats you have to ask yourself how to do people get to your site, what are they looking for when they are there, and why? What is useful to them and what is not useful to them.

Dates are basically useless. When you have a date browser, how does that help me when I can’t see what content relates to a date until I’ve clicked it? It’s mystery meat navigation. You have no idea what you’ve got until you click it. The date is not relevant.

If you present a list of months to click on, that’s as good as useless. This is why I don’t do it on my site. It’s just random clicking.

Think content first, time secondary. New is important, old is not. Seeing the content beats choosing what to see beforehand.

Just do what I’ve done, but instead of having one item per page, have a month's worth, and then at the bottom link to the next page. So,

/programming/ (this month's programming articles)
/programming/mar-2011 (last month's programming articles)
/programming/feb-2011 (&c.)

The home page would be all types amalgamated, but the same principle. Show one month on the page and then link to previous months for each additional page.

/ (this month's content)
/mar-2011
/feb-2011 (&c.)

Permalink based on the article name. Date is irrelevant here. When people link to an article, the date does not need to be in the URL.

/article_name
/programming/article_name (for each tag, too)

When people click the date in the article’s page, it will take them to the month page it belongs in.