0 in version number?

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 10:44:13PM +0000, Gary Willoughby via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Friday, 16 October 2015 at 17:58:27 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> >How is whether there's a 0 before the 68 anything but bikeshedding?
> >It's the same number either way, it sorts better as-is, and it would
> >be inconsistent of us to change now. Changing how the overall
> >numbering scheme works might make sense, but simply removing the 0
> >wouldn't gain us anything as far as I can see.
> >
> >- Jonathan M Davis
> 
> How? Let me explain.
> 
> Removing a zero is not what this is about. What we are talking about
> is marketing.
> 
> For D to be successful, to grow in users and respect, it has to accept
> that certain things must be done. It must appear to be part of the
> gang.
> 
> The versioning system that D uses is a reflection of the product as a
> whole.  It's the same as the website and the tooling, etc. We, i.e.
> the D community, are using a version scheme no-one else uses. It
> confuses everyone who tries to understand it. For example, no one
> understands why there is a zero there.  No-one understands why we are
> at a minor version of 68. Look at the version numbers of popular
> languages and then look at D. D is the odd one out!
[...]

I do not speak for any of the core D devs, but ... I never understood
this fixation on conformity.  Is there concrete, non-anecdotal evidence
for people turning away from D because it has "strange" version numbers?
That seems an awfully poor and irrational excuse to reject a language.
You may as well recommend that we should avoid version numbers
containing 5, 13, and 666 because it might turn away superstitious
potential users.  How does that have anything to do with *real*
marketing?

On the contrary, the accepted wisdom is that *differentiating* your
product is generally a wiser business decision than conforming
willy-nilly to your competitors.

I can see a reason for adopting a *consistent* and *predictable*
versioning scheme -- it lets people know what's a stable release, what's
an interim release, what's a major change, what's a minor change, etc.,
and is useful for migration planning and such.  *That* I consider a good
marketing strategy.  But I don't understand what's with the fixation
that it must be *this* particular scheme with *this* particular set of
numbers, as if somehow the fact that the Big Boys, whoever they are,
chose some particular versioning scheme, magically endows that scheme
with miraculous marketing properties.

If we were starting from scratch, I could see the rationale for adopting
a "standard" versioning scheme... but why now, so late into the game,
and why version numbers, of all things, when there are far more
important matters at hand?

Not to mention, if you want to talk about the truly Big Boys, even
Windows doesn't follow any of the proposed versioning schemes (I mean,
what's up with 3.0 -> 3.1 -> 95 -> 98 -> 2000 -> XP -> 7 -> 8 -> 9... ?
That doesn't even follow any logical numerical ordering!), yet you have
to admit its marketing is far more successful than D can probably dream
of being. Does that mean that we should change D's versioning scheme
every 5 years in order to remain successful?


T

-- 
Nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself. -- Herman Hesse