Re:Chronologic Versioning: No more arbitrary version updates...
by jacquesm on Thursday January 02, 2020 @03:26AM
(#21933774)
> he indicated that he firmly believes that having an unchanged system that will produce the same output now and in the future is more important than introducing new features
I sincerely wished that that was a more common sentiment. All this change for nothing doesn't move the needle at all and irritates users the world over.
Re:Chronologic Versioning: No more arbitrary version updates...
by qwerty1234599 on Friday January 03, 2020 @11:46AM
(#21947584)
Oh really? You want an IE6 situation to happen for every software out there?
Re:Chronologic Versioning: No more arbitrary version updates...
by boublepop on Thursday January 02, 2020 @08:35AM
(#21935203)
I have enormous respect for Knuth and his versioning joke is cute, but effectively it just means development and feature additions happen in forks or new projects, such as LaTeX and the many others.
Re:Chronologic Versioning: No more arbitrary version updates...
by tonyedgecombe on Thursday January 02, 2020 @10:26AM
(#21936093)
In some ways that isn’t a bad idea. I was looking at the plans for Express the other day and it struck me they would be better freezing features and encouraging people who wanted async to look at something like Koa. As it is they will probably end up with the worst of both worlds.
Re:Chronologic Versioning: No more arbitrary version updates...
by smitty1e on Thursday January 02, 2020 @09:33AM
(#21935579)
Or maybe there is wisdom in thinking of applications more along the lines of protocol stacks.
A TeX layer implements mechanism, a LaTeX layer does the policy, and an Overleaf handles the UI chores.
(I'm a Spacemacs/org-mode/texlive user, personally.)
"The current version of TeX is 3.14159265; it was last updated on January 12, 2014. The design was frozen after version 3.0, and no new feature or fundamental change will be added, so all newer versions will contain only bug fixes. Even though Donald Knuth himself has suggested a few areas in which TeX could have been improved, he indicated that he firmly believes that having an unchanged system that will produce the same output now and in the future is more important than introducing new features. For this reason, he has stated that the "absolutely final change (to be made after my death)" will be to change the version number to π, at which point all remaining bugs will become features. Likewise, versions of Metafont after 2.0 asymptotically approach e (currently at 2.7182818), and a similar change will be applied after Knuth's death."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX