That's not true, they can be for either humans, computers, or both. Software still has to understand and do something with that version number, even if it came

That's not true, they can be for either humans, computers, or both. Software still has to understand and do something with that version number, even if it came from a human. And if it has to store, sort, or process that number a lot, it will still be faster to store and compare binary than a string. For comparison, I think some here would be shocked to learn their IPv4 address is stored as an unsigned 32-bit integer. Its not a number, and definitely not faster to use as a string.