The death of major versions?

June 30, 2015

2 min read

<rant>

I for one, love updating an app and seeing a new major version released. It's like Christmas morning, what new goodies am I gonna get to enjoy?! In the case of some apps like Chrome and Firefox, a new major version may just be some bug fixes... (sadpanda)

Don't get me wrong, I love that Chrome and Firefox are being agile and releasing often on a schedule but why change the major version if nothing is big enough to dictate a new major version. To me, a new major version should have a few big new features or enough rewrite under the hood to deserve such a version. Why not use a dot release so instead of Chrome 43 it'd be something like Chrome 4.27 or something like that? So when Chrome 5 comes out, you know there was something major has happened.

If I created a browser extension that relies on some feature but that feature was added in... crap, what version again? Oh, Chrome 243. Ok cool... Knowing that Chrome 6 added the feature is a lot easier to remember.

Small potatoes huh? Yes and no. Yes, knowing something changed in version 6 versus 243 is just a different number but maybe version 6 brought many changes whereas version 174, 243 and 257 brought the changes so now you can only target 257+. What if version 6 replaced V8 with something new? That should definitely be a new major version that is distinguishable right? Nah, it's version whatever.

Man, I woke up on the nitpicking side of the bed today.

</rant>

Written by Mitchell Simoens who is a long time nerd developing software and building computers and gadgets. Anything expressed on this website are Mitchell Simoens's alone and do not represent his employer.