Re: Meaninglessness
No, that's not the best approach. It works if you have one set of releases and everyone uses one of those and ideally the latest one. It works less well if you have different styles of releases. Here are a few examples.
You have a program that gets updated from time to time. Sometimes, you make a big change that breaks the workflow. Maybe you charge users for that big update. Maybe you just want to let them postpone making the shift until they're more comfortable that early adopters didn't find it broken. You might release updates for both versions. If the version numbers look like 2.2.391 and 3.0.5, it's clear which one they'll use. If they look like 2022.02.16.15.30.1 and 2022.02.16.17.38.1, how do you know which you want?
You can also run into string problems. How much precision do you need in the date version numbers? Leading zeros or not? Do you separate the date components or keep them together like in the ISO format? What do you do for beta versions? The major.minor.patch format is usually shorter and clearer, even if one of the numbers gets large.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
