0 in version number?

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 10/16/2015 07:19 PM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> 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?
>

Yea, +1 here

> 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... ?

Fixed:

... -> 3.1 -> 95 -> 97^H^H98 -> Me -> XP -> Vista -> 7 -> 8 -> 10
           \-> 4 -> 2000 -> Server 2003 -> ...

> 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?
>

If we really want to be hip and cool we should follow the brilliant 
versioning schemes from Debian and Apple:

Woody -> Sarge -> Etch -> Lenny -> Squeeze -> Wheezy -> Jessie -> Stretch

Puma -> Jaguar -> Panther -> ... -> Lion -> Mountain Lion -> Mavericks 
-> Yosemite -> El Capitan

For bonus "cool" points, we can force everyone to memorize two 
completely *separate* versioning schemes for the same product, one 
numerical and one unordered and nonsensical, and make everyone memorize 
how each of the two version names for each release line up with each other.

SemVer is very good. But aside from that, all this worrying over version 
numbers, and changing DMD's scheme, is all just "Fire and Motion": 
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html