Against SemVer(natemeyvis.com)
natemeyvis.com
Against SemVer
https://www.natemeyvis.com/against-semver/
3 comments
Author does not present an alternative, but one seen is based on timestamp, like version 2025.12.23.
Some alternatives:
- Finger to the wind ("this feels like a big change"). - Domain-specific versioning scheme (so Ruff uses [this variant](https://docs.astral.sh/ruff/versioning/#version-changes) that seems reasonable to me; it's described as a SemVer variant, but the work to specify how various cases are handled seems very useful to me). - As you say, time stamps. FWIW I don't like that very much, because time is often so weakly correlated with progress / "breakingness," but it has its proponents.
- Finger to the wind ("this feels like a big change"). - Domain-specific versioning scheme (so Ruff uses [this variant](https://docs.astral.sh/ruff/versioning/#version-changes) that seems reasonable to me; it's described as a SemVer variant, but the work to specify how various cases are handled seems very useful to me). - As you say, time stamps. FWIW I don't like that very much, because time is often so weakly correlated with progress / "breakingness," but it has its proponents.
Semantic versioning encourages breaking changes through basic bigger-number-better human psychology...you can't get to version 10 without a lot of breaking changes.
And breaking changes are bad software engineering. That's what is bad about semantic versioning.
And breaking changes are bad software engineering. That's what is bad about semantic versioning.