5 ms·
Ask HN: Which is the oldest software alive still in 0.x, used by many?
From what I have known and used, PuTTY seems to be the oldest software still in beta (0.79 at the moment), with it's first version released sometime in 1998, not sure about the exact date.
PuTTY's first Git commit shows "Fri Jan 8 13:02:13 1999" for beta 0.43, from r11 of SVN.
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html
- KMnO4 3y agoKeep in mind that not all projects use the semantic versioning we typically see (ie major.minor.patch). There’s a type of versioning called “ZeroVer” where the version is -never- to exceed 0.x.x. https://0ver.org/ https://0ver.org/ According to that site, the software ASCEND (0.9.8) was first released over 45 years ago.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoI have never seen that site before, but taking a look right now, my conclusion is that it is satire.
- basic612 3y agoThe site appears to be quite tongue in cheek however the table of 0.x projects looks like quite the valid reference.
- idiocratic 3y agoTrue but that site is satire https://0ver.org/about.html https://0ver.org/about.html
- bhaak 3y agoNot the first joke to be taken for real and being used by far too many people because they find it useful.
- lnxg33k1 3y ago[flagged]
- bmicraft 3y ago> used by far too many people because they find it useful. I don't think that's true.
- ahofmann 3y agoWell, it seems to be true. This thread is the best example.
- appplication 3y agoInability to release 1.0 of any software is driven by indecision and/or a lack of confidence in the stability of your product. Nothing more. If you’re decisive about meaningful features on realistic milestones and confident that you have a stable system, there is no reason to not 1.0.
- wenc 3y agoTeX converges to pi It's currently at version 3.141592653 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX
- smitty1e 3y agoAnd the related Metafont converges to e. Knuth for the transcendental win!
- reikonomusha 3y agoIt would be a transcendental tragedy, because those versions only truly become transcendental when Knuth dies. :(
- nailer 3y agoKnuth also has his own definition of bug, limited to mathematical incorrectness.
- arunc 3y agoInteresting to know that zer0ver exists! Do you know how they claim it to be the most popular versioning scheme?
- alanbernstein 3y agoIt's probably true if you assume every "first commit" project starts at 0.0.1. I don't think they put much thought into justifying it though.
- mdaniel 3y agoI was going to say aspell (currently at 0.68 up from 0.10 on 1998-09-12) http://aspell.net/man-html/ChangeLog.html http://aspell.net/man-html/ChangeLog.html but of course the "used by many" is the debatable part of your question Even PuTTY I would guess is not "by many" but who am I to say not having been locked to Windows for ages gettext at 0.22 up from 0.7.1 on 1995-07-04 would certainly be in the short list https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=blob;f=ChangeLog.0;h=de6c8113a12cf9524936ae7fdc3806eb1839b306;hb=refs/heads/0.22.x#l1767 https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=gettext.git;a=blob;f=...
- analog31 3y agoPuTTY is surprisingly popular among hardware hackers, for quickly testing serial devices.
- junon 3y agoThis. It's invaluable for checking serial ports on Windows or when WSL otherwise butchers serial data coming through Windows ports.
- hackerbrother 3y agoPuTTY is very popular!
- dangggg 3y ago[dead]
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoI use PuTTY weekly
- bilekas 3y agoPutty is my default go to and everyone i work with too.. i couldn't even imagine anyone worth their salt not knowing it, let alone using it. Edit: default go to on Windows
- wk_end 3y agoMAME - the truly excellent everything emulator - is version 0.258, having first been released in 1997.
- deaddodo 3y agoMAME (and many of the other projects listed in other comments here) developers have gone on the record of saying 1.0 would be a fully accurate emulator of all arcade machines (before they added general machines and consoles) and that they will probably never achieve that.
- corbezzoli 3y agoWhenever I see software under v1, I see developers who are afraid of commitment. There’s nothing special about v1, there’s no reason to keep a useless zero for a decade. At some point you gotta realize you’ve been using the minor version as a major so that v0.39.0 is just v39.0. Apple recently realized the same thing when they stopped releasing 10.x versions and just did 11.0 after 20 years.
- sdwr 3y ago[flagged]
- ewoodrich 3y agoThe Apple case seems way more about OS X being the well advertised brand of the operating system vs the idea that it was because of superstition about incrementing the major version number.
- HWR_14 3y agoOS X was a huge breaking change from MacOS 9. Advertising OS 11 would have caused many people to wonder if all their software was about to break. Which is exactly what happened when Big Sur was released. Apple using semantic versioning is a huge win.
- csnover 3y agoApple don’t use semantic versioning. macOS 10.15 broke all 32-bit software. If that’s not an incompatible version update, I don’t know what is.
- bhaak 3y agoThere's nothing special about v1 either. So you can just increment the minor version and would have the same effect as if you were just using the major version. As you said yourself. As long as releases happen I don't think you can say the devs are afraid of commitment. Note that this only applies to self contained software. For libraries SemVer makes sense but other types of software usually don't need it. For my projects I usually just show the major version to the common user and internally SemVer is used for debug information and compatibility signalling (where this applies).
- lolinder 3y agoDoes PuTTY identify itself as Beta? I did a sitewide search with no results [0]. In general I wouldn't read too much into the specific versions that projects choose. Some of these long-running 0.x projects may as well be using single-part version numbers, they probably just keep the 0 around because it's a tradition. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.chiark.greenend.org.uk%2F%7Esgtatham%2Fputty%2F+%22beta%22&oq=site%3Awww.chiark.greenend.org.uk%2F%7Esgtatham%2Fputty%2F+%22beta%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.chiark.greenend.o...
- jacobsenscott 3y agoI don't think so. Applications don't usually follow semantic versioning. Heck, semantic versioning wasn't really a thing back when putty started.
- hieu229 3y agoAnyone feel that the version number isn't really important? I didn't know 1.x supported to be stable version until very recently
- TheRoque 3y agoI think it matters. Most people still follow common sense rules with it, e.g. bellow 0 is expected beta, minor version changes don't break stuff etc.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xboxnolifes 3y agoIt matters a lot for libraries. It matters much less for applications.
- severus_snape 3y ago0 A.D. Began in 2001, now in 0.0.26. https://play0ad.com/ https://play0ad.com/ https://releases.wildfiregames.com/ https://releases.wildfiregames.com/
- noonething 3y agowinrar 1995
- hieu229 3y agowinrar is actually version 6.23 (2023-08) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinRAR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinRAR
- noonething 3y agooh right, sorry, thanks.
- mannyv 3y agoGnu hurd
- dingosity 3y agoGnu Hurd fails the "used by many" clause.
- mbakke 3y agoI'm working on a GNU/Hurd hosting service, maybe that will help it gain traction. Preview: https://tryhurd.gexp.no https://tryhurd.gexp.no
- dingosity 3y agoI joke about Gnu Hurd, but it would be great to get actual numbers. Ubuntu used to do this thing where you could put a virtual pin in a virtual map when you installed it to build a heatmap of where users were. It was completely optional at the time (hopefully it still is?) But I think it was enough for Canonical to get a order of magnitude estimate for how many Ubuntu systems were out there.
- winrid 3y agoNot played much, but kind of interesting - I nominate NetPanzer! Open sourced in 1999 or so, is still technically in beta at 0.9.x I just got the last maintainer to put the code up on GH [0] and have been working on the next release, hopefully later this year. I also put some servers up and setup bots. Sadly a couple months ago the guy emailed me saying he was very sick (he's been working on the game off and on for like 15 years and he only really writes C, I have no idea how old this guy is). He hasn't emailed me back, so I don't know if he's still alive. :( I may have to fork the game (I've also been making progress on a WASM version to play in the browser). [0] https://github.com/netpanzer/netpanzer/tree/dev https://github.com/netpanzer/netpanzer/tree/dev
- walthamstow 3y agoIt's not that old, but FastAPI is quite widely used and is still 0.x
- garashovb 3y agoNot so old (afaik, released in 2015) but React Native also is still 0.72
- cheald 3y agoGrepping my dpkg list for packages which start with \s0. is fun. aspell (currently 0.60.8) has a release note for 0.11 on Sept 12, 1998 gettext began in 1994 and is currently v0.21-11 tftp is 0.17-25 and dates back to 1981 telnet is 0.17, and its origins date back to 1969!
- Saphyel 3y agoFastAPI lol