3 ms·

“To begin with, it's weird that versions are strings.” - what else would they be? An audio tone at a particular frequency? A vibration pattern? It’s written com

“To begin with, it's weird that versions are strings.” - what else would they be? An audio tone at a particular frequency? A vibration pattern? It’s written communication. Perhaps he’s just confusing data types with how they are communicated. But then, you’re free to use any data type you wish. If I’m not mistaken, Ubuntu & Jetbrains both use date fields in their versioning. Still communicated as a readable string. He proposes tuples, but doesn’t care for semver. So what would the tuple mean? As a human race, I’m sure we can do better with versioning semantics. Perhaps I’ll put some more spare personal time into that semantic schema kit I was designing. Ultimately it’s about data types, containment and meaning. And his proposal ignores most of that.

akkartik 9y ago
Author here. I said tuples right after that sentence you quoted, and then I showed that tuples too could be dropped. So it's unclear to me why you feel the need for snark, and it's making it hard to understand you. Can you elaborate on what I am ignoring?
- rayascott 9y ago
  Commenter here. Firstly my comments are designed to highlight confusion in your argument, or with your understanding of versioning as a whole. With regard to version identifiers, they aren’t simply strings, they are complex data types made up of iterable data types. Even a custom enumeration that holds values such as “alpha”, “beta”, “rc”, isnt just a string, but an enumerated type, meant to convey MEANING. The fact that they are serialised into a format that happens to be readable and parsable, is besides the point. You write “Let's just make them a tuple. Instead of "3.0.2", we'll say "(3, 0, 2)".” Why bother? You’ll end up treating them the exact same way. Or does the tuple have some structure that is different from the containment found in semver? Semver is a heirarchy. And what would it mean? Absolutely nothing if you were hoping to understand the difference between 2 versions simply marked like “Product-1 21” the “Product-2 13”. If you think every open source developer’s life is going get easier with strings that hold no meaning, you are sorely mistaken. I’m truly baffled by your reasoning. Others have commented, and I agree, after 20 years in the industry, pinning is vital. The Go community isn’t wrong. The request to pin is borne of experience. You are ignoring the fact that working with multiple dependency’s that are produced by coders you have no control over isn’t all rainbows & unicorns.
  - akkartik 9y ago
    Ok, thanks for trying but I think we're talking past each other. I feel pretty confident that I'm not just ignoring 20 years in the industry. (I've spent 20 years in the industry.) If I'm missing something it's subtle and I don't think you're anywhere near it. So I'll stop engaging here. m.nn.pp-alpha-rc0 may convey meaning to the author, but it is meaningless to users because the 'alpha' and 'rc0' mean different things in different libraries, based on their release processes. You have spent more sentences on my tuple idea than I spent introducing then completely emptying it. That suggests that I have failed to convey my larger point to you. I'm going to agree to disagree and move on.
    - richk449 9y ago
      > m.nn.pp-alpha-rc0 may convey meaning to the author, but it is meaningless to users because the 'alpha' and 'rc0' mean different things in different libraries, based on their release processes I don't think you are using the word "meaningless" correctly. rc0 may not mean exactly the same thing in different software packages, but it always means the first release candidate. Thus, it is not meaningless - it conveys meaning. And if the user wants, they can look up that software package, and find out exactly what rc0 means, gaining even more meaning from the description. Perhaps you are trying to say that rc0 doesn't convey as much information as quickly as the alternative you are proposing?
hyperpape 9y ago
The ultimate suggestion of a name, version pair is easy enough to understand, but I also don't get what mentioning tuples is intended to show. In practice, a string with a required format of "x.y.z" just is a 3-tuple of ints. Restricting the values to ints makes it easy enough to parse. The example of npm shows some weird extensions like "1.2.3pre" which definitely complicate parsing, but that's not as much a difference between strings and tuples, as a difference between having a lot more options.

akkartik 9y ago

Author here. I said tuples right after that sentence you quoted, and then I showed that tuples too could be dropped. So it's unclear to me why you feel the need for snark, and it's making it hard to understand you. Can you elaborate on what I am ignoring?

rayascott 9y ago
Commenter here. Firstly my comments are designed to highlight confusion in your argument, or with your understanding of versioning as a whole. With regard to version identifiers, they aren’t simply strings, they are complex data types made up of iterable data types. Even a custom enumeration that holds values such as “alpha”, “beta”, “rc”, isnt just a string, but an enumerated type, meant to convey MEANING. The fact that they are serialised into a format that happens to be readable and parsable, is besides the point. You write “Let's just make them a tuple. Instead of "3.0.2", we'll say "(3, 0, 2)".” Why bother? You’ll end up treating them the exact same way. Or does the tuple have some structure that is different from the containment found in semver? Semver is a heirarchy. And what would it mean? Absolutely nothing if you were hoping to understand the difference between 2 versions simply marked like “Product-1 21” the “Product-2 13”. If you think every open source developer’s life is going get easier with strings that hold no meaning, you are sorely mistaken. I’m truly baffled by your reasoning. Others have commented, and I agree, after 20 years in the industry, pinning is vital. The Go community isn’t wrong. The request to pin is borne of experience. You are ignoring the fact that working with multiple dependency’s that are produced by coders you have no control over isn’t all rainbows & unicorns.
- akkartik 9y ago
  Ok, thanks for trying but I think we're talking past each other. I feel pretty confident that I'm not just ignoring 20 years in the industry. (I've spent 20 years in the industry.) If I'm missing something it's subtle and I don't think you're anywhere near it. So I'll stop engaging here. m.nn.pp-alpha-rc0 may convey meaning to the author, but it is meaningless to users because the 'alpha' and 'rc0' mean different things in different libraries, based on their release processes. You have spent more sentences on my tuple idea than I spent introducing then completely emptying it. That suggests that I have failed to convey my larger point to you. I'm going to agree to disagree and move on.
  - richk449 9y ago
    > m.nn.pp-alpha-rc0 may convey meaning to the author, but it is meaningless to users because the 'alpha' and 'rc0' mean different things in different libraries, based on their release processes I don't think you are using the word "meaningless" correctly. rc0 may not mean exactly the same thing in different software packages, but it always means the first release candidate. Thus, it is not meaningless - it conveys meaning. And if the user wants, they can look up that software package, and find out exactly what rc0 means, gaining even more meaning from the description. Perhaps you are trying to say that rc0 doesn't convey as much information as quickly as the alternative you are proposing?

hyperpape 9y ago

The ultimate suggestion of a name, version pair is easy enough to understand, but I also don't get what mentioning tuples is intended to show. In practice, a string with a required format of "x.y.z" just is a 3-tuple of ints. Restricting the values to ints makes it easy enough to parse. The example of npm shows some weird extensions like "1.2.3pre" which definitely complicate parsing, but that's not as much a difference between strings and tuples, as a difference between having a lot more options.