The Amazing World of Version Numbers
They exaggerate. They fudge. They confuse. And sometimes they're not even numbers. By
Harry McCracken | Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 2:17 am
In theory, software version numbers should be about as scintillating as as serial numbers, house numbers, channel numbers, or Vehicle Identification Numbers. You don’t get much more mundane than the practice of keeping track of a software package’s major and minor editions by assigning decimal numbers to them.
Except…
version numbers long ago stopped being version numbers. Software companies started using them as marketing weapons. They tried varying methods of assigning identities to applications, such as naming them after years. They decided that numbers were too dry and substituted letters and words that were meant to be more evocative. I’m not embarrassed to admit I find ‘em interesting enough to write this article.
I cheerfully admit to using the broadest possible definition of
version number in this story–hey, I’m going to discuss names that don’t involve numbers at all. I know that developers still use more formal, traditional
software versioning naming conventions behind the scenes. (Windows Vista, for instance, is officially version 6.0 of Windows;
Technologizer is on version 20593, but don’t ask me to explain why.)
For no particular reason, I’m going to write this as a FAQ. Even though there’s an awful lot about this topic which I just don’t know…
When did version numbers come into use?