▲ 1 points

Software Versioning Fatigue

by itvision·2y ago·1 comments·view on hn ↗

Do you remember what the current version of Android is? iOS? Google Chrome? Mozilla Firefox? Or let's talk about something more professional, what about Autodesk Autocad? How do you feel about Blender?

You may say it's irrelevant except when it is and you wanna make sure you have all the security and product features available without thinking too much and researching.

Why haven't companies simply adopted the YYYY release scheme or YYYY.NN?

What about something like this?

Android 2023? iOS 2024.3? Firefox 2024.5 (the fifth release for this year)?

I know there are developers from the respective companies here. Would be nice if you voiced your concern.

1 comments

> Why haven't companies simply adopted the YYYY release scheme or YYYY.NN?

Personally, I prefer the more traditional version numbering scheme (AA.BB.CC) because it actually tells useful information around the version. But if the choice is between your suggestion and the nearly nothing that is in vogue now, I'll take your suggestion every day of the week.

I think that the deprecation of useful versioning information is because so many companies want to do continuous releases rather than discrete versioned ones. While I very much think (as a user) that continuous releases are a Bad Thing and I wish devs would move away from the model, if we're going to have them then the traditional versioning scheme does become unworkable.