Learn English – How to explain sorting by time descending in colloquial English

Let's put it this way: It's "dodgy" if you are doing a scientific paper and should be using more precise quantitative terminology. @kiamlaluno's suggestion of replacing it with "many" doesn't really improve precision in those cases, though.

I have seen "a lot of" used appropriately a lot of times in scholarly works, though, especially those dealing with the humanities rather than the sciences, and especially lately. Language changes, as we all know, and what were strict and uncompromising requirements 100 years ago are often relaxed today.

In fact, although I don't see why one couldn't use the expression as an aside or commentary on a piece of data, it does give a much less formal feel to a piece of writing, and may induce the reader not to take the statement seriously. Consider the second sentences in the following comparison:

The studies showed that 74.65% of the time rats injected with the compound rather than the placebo developed tumors. That's a lot of evidence in favor of considering the compound to be a carcinogen.

The studies showed that 74.65% of the time rats injected with the compound rather than the placebo developed tumors. That constitutes strong evidence in favor of considering the compound to be a carcinogen.

The tone of the second example is simply more in keeping with the dispassionate delivery of data, and is likely to be much better received by the academic community. So even if you are not stylistically prohibited from using "a lot of" it may make sense to avoid it in an academic context. And if you are going to school in Holland, and that is the prevailing sentiment you encounter, taking a rebellious stance on this issue may affect your progress negatively.

I would actually not describe times as being old or new, but rather the objects are old or new.

The object with the lowest creation time (lowest creation time stamp):

The oldest object.

How to find the first modified object?
Take the first object that was accessed after [some moment in time].

Leave it to whoever has to answer / implement this to make it technical. Just describe in everyday language what you mean: the newest object, the object that was last modified, or accessed, the objects that were created last week, etc.

In technical lingo, I would rather not use timebut time stamp, and I would certainly not use newer and older, but rather higherand lower to mean more, rep. less recent.