mojombo/semver — Issue #4: Thanks for the motivation and the clarity
Author: Slevinski
Created: 2011-12-08 20:05:26+00:00
State: open

I'm dealing with the flip side of "dependency hell", called "the bleeding edge".

For the past 7 years, I've been balancing R&D with a prototype system used by an international audience. I've created several generations of test encoding forms. There were many disruptive changes along the way and people lost data and had to redo work. I performed several major conversions between 16-bit symbol sets used within similar data structures. I didn't use semantic versioning.

Earlier this year, I accomplished my last design goal. I finally had the data and the time to really tackle the search problem for written sign language, a 2-dimensional script. In October, I successfully determined the final form of the word string and the formal query string. Searching that is fast enough for spell check, auto-suggest, and many other flexible searching.

The answer was regular data with simple regular expressions.

A joke - A programmer had a problem so he decided to use regular expressions. Now he has two problems.

The joke is supposed to be funny because it's hard to write simple, elegant, and fast regular expressions when you are trying to use real world data.

But it's not really a joke if you can evolve with regular expressions. The first problem involves crafting regular data that can be productively searched. The second problem is crafting simple regular expressions that are meaningful and fast.

Each generation pointed the way to the next and require a data conversion and reintegration.

So I realize I've been in an extended gestation period as I've incorporated each new lesson learned. In 2009, I thought I had a somewhat stable standard. At that time, I had a test design mapped out in my head for the search, but I didn't have the data or time to explore it more.

But now that I have achieved all of my design goals, it's time to release a stable, semantically versioned standard. Reading about semver partially shamed me for not following it sooner. The other part was inspired to produce a stable standard now that I was ready.

So I'm writing the Foundation of Modern SignWriting v1 as a 12 part series, using semantic versioning for the specifications. The small reference will be ready 1/12/12. Covered under the Open Font License and Creative Commons by-sa. The large reference will develop in a wiki over time, but always in agreement with the small reference.
http://www.signpuddle.com

Thanks for explaining semantic versioning with such clarity and purpose.