There was an interesting discussion on the dev list not long ago <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/julia-dev/CYhPCQ4rCLY/ByyIW_Ka0ooJ> about the release schedule of Julia. Although it focused more on timeline and less on version numbering, it touched on several of the topics discussed in this thread as well. We do have some “expectation problems” of our own in the Julia community, for example as Tobi put it in the other thread:
the main issue is in my point that during a dev period feature come in and people start to use the dev branch for regular development. The Compat module is in my opinion made the wrong way around. What currently happens is that unstable features are bypassed into a “released” package landscape. Julia is an awesome project, and it’s going to be an awesome product when it’s “done”. But currently, we’re in the middle of a phase of development where you cannot expect to accurately predict where we’re going to be in three or six months, much less predict a date for a 1.0 release (after all, it was once said that *“we’ve been much more on top of the release process this time” <https://groups.google.com/d/msg/julia-dev/CYhPCQ4rCLY/ByyIW_Ka0ooJ>* about 0.4, but we’re still falling behind schedule on this one too…). Don’t get me wrong - I think this is totally fine for a project like Julia. We *should* be experimenting, trying things out and taking the time to make sure the decisions we make are the right ones. But maybe we should stop expecting to have a production-quality product to play around with. (On the other hand, Julia programmers will probably always have high expectations, considering Julia’s origins <http://julialang.org/blog/2012/02/why-we-created-julia/>…) // T On Wednesday, July 29, 2015 at 7:00:38 PM UTC+2, Tony Kelman wrote: I guess the waters are a little muddied here lately with Rust having > recently put such a big emphasis on stability and reaching 1.0, actively > telling people not to use the language prior to that point, and seemingly > having really high expectations about how long 1.x will last for. They have > a much smaller standard library than we do, but I would think trimming ours > down to the bare minimum would be necessary before calling the language > 1.0. Maybe that could just as well be a 2.0 or 3.0 target instead. > > > On Wednesday, July 29, 2015 at 9:28:56 AM UTC-7, Stefan Karpinski wrote: >> >> I do believe that other languages have not really followed the semantic >> versioning specification (can't blame them really since it didn't exist) >> and have introduced backwards incompatible changes in minor versions. If >> we're going to follow semver, then we will very likely want to make major >> releases more often since we will probably have some backwards incompatible >> changes we want to introduce periodically, even if they're not huge. >> >> On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 12:20 PM, Tony Kelman <to...@kelman.net> wrote: >> >>> Actually considering that we've been more strict about version >>> discipline than absolutely required by semver for 0.x.y, maybe we could >>> pull a GCC and just start treating major number the way we've been treating >>> minor. It might not be all that different, except we'd be able to do the >>> "backporting features" thing and have a very good way of dealing with it. >>> So I retract my incredulity. >>> >>> >>> On Wednesday, July 29, 2015 at 9:10:46 AM UTC-7, Stefan Karpinski wrote: >>>> >>>> Doing more frequent major releases than has been traditional for >>>> programming languages strikes me as not a terrible idea, honestly. >>>> >>>> On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 11:26 PM, Tony Kelman <to...@kelman.net> wrote: >>>> >>>>> I'm with Kevin, having followed development (too) closely for the last >>>>> year and a half I find the prospect of 1.0 any time during 2016 totally >>>>> ridiculous and unrelealistic. Unless you fully anticipate releasing 2.0 >>>>> some time in 2017. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Tuesday, July 28, 2015 at 6:52:36 PM UTC-7, Stefan Karpinski wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> That's literally the only part of that post that I would change :-) >>>>>> >>>>>> But no, I'm not trolling, 1.0 should be out next year. Predicting >>>>>> down to the month – or even quarter – is hard, but that's what I think >>>>>> we're looking at. I'll post a 1.0 roadmap issue soon. >>>>>> >>>>>> On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 6:56 PM, Kevin Squire <kevin....@gmail.com> >>>>>> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>> Stefan, are you trolling again? ;-P >>>>>>> >>>>>>> http://julialang.org/blog/2012/02/why-we-created-julia/ >>>>>>> >>>>>>> On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 12:41 PM, Stefan Karpinski < >>>>>>> ste...@karpinski.org> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Version 1.0 will be released around this time next year. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 3:27 PM, Pileas <phoebus....@gmail.com> >>>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> Greetings, >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I have been following the development of Julia for sometime now >>>>>>>>> and I am really thrilled to know that you guys have reached version >>>>>>>>> 0.3.11. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> To my understanding sometime in the near future you will release >>>>>>>>> the new version 0.4.0., a version that it is supposed to bring many >>>>>>>>> changes. >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> My question is simple: when is Julia expected to "mature", so that >>>>>>>>> a "universal" (more or less) documentation (or maybe more thorough >>>>>>>>> books >>>>>>>>> than those that exist by now) will follow and less bug fixed will be >>>>>>>>> needed? >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I wish you the best! >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>> >>>> >>
