Blog Post VERS. 4.1.63

 Greetings! 


This week during class, among other things, we learned about semantic version numbers. As the name implies, the process of determining what kind of version goes to what kind of version number is quite complicated, and requires some level of thought, which I admittedly hadn't done before now. The MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH format for changes does seem rather useful and straightforward, but actually figuring out how to classify changing how a print command prints to the console seems like a lot of work. I always had this notion in mind that developers kind of just picked versions numbers at random, or at least sequentially, I didn't know there was an actual structure behind what appears to be a simple string of numbers.

I feel like with writing these posts I have a tendency to view other blog posts that completely contradict, or speak about the shortcomings of what we learn in class. I don't mean to be a cynic, I just want to be aware of what can go wrong when using such a structured method of formatting. That being said, I viewed "Semantic Versioning is a terrible mistake", from the Reinvigorated Programmer, which is a personal blog of a career programmer and hobby archeologist. While I don't fully agree with the overly cynical title of the article, I do believe it makes some very valid points. Within this article, the writer speaks about the problems with having numbered releases for software, as it makes it so programmers can make frequent breaking changes to software, which are denoted by a version number. Instead of having a real "Major Release", it's really just an excuse to release a small breaking change and release it as it's own version. I can see obvious problems with this, such as the tedium of upkeep and maintenance. While I haven't worked with many of these constantly changing APIs in my school programming career, I can certainly relate to the struggle of dealing with a constant influx of new versions. To anyone that has tried to play the video game Minecraft, and attempted to mod said game, you know how difficult it can be to make sure everything is working with the same base version of the software. 

Overall this article was pretty good! I enjoyed the semi-comedic tone of the author, and it feels a little less dry than some of the other more technical blogs I've viewed in my time. In terms of semantic versions, I am glad I've taken the time to look into it further, as I think it's helped me clarify what the differences are between the different numbers, and what it means to release a major version following this numeric scheme. So the next time I use a piece of software that has some history to it, and is on version 21.3.56, I can smile in satisfaction at the fact that I know what that means, but also grimace at the fact that, inevitably, software will break. Eugh.


Article Link:https://reprog.wordpress.com/2023/12/27/semantic-versioning-is-a-terrible-mistake/

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