this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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In the programming world, versions with a 9 as a major digit, or most significant minor digit, are considered bad luck. Windows 95 and 98 aren't considered amongst that bad luck thing though, as they were actually versions 4.0 and 4.1, respectively. 95 and 98 were named after the year they were released, but their internal version numbers did not include a 9. Windows ME was a disaster though, and it's version number was 4.9...
It's kinda like how people are superstitious about the number 13, programmers are now superstitious about version numbers with a 9 in the version number now. Windows ME probably at least partly started that.
But hey, that's just coming from many years of experience with technology starting from the mid 90's and also a handful of articles I've read over about it, who really knows though?
I do believe that version numbers with a 9 in them lead the end users to think "Hey, this is a 0.9, 1.9, 9, whatever, when are they gonna fix all the bugs and release the 1.0, 2.0, 10.0, etc..."
Where are you located? I don’t know any programmer who is afraid of 9. Not even in releases.
We had a year of iterations of X.900, X.910, etc etc. None of us thought that was bad luck. And honestly we implemented some fun features to write.
Versioning is usually done with three numbers, often separated by a period. So Major.Minor.Patch/Hotfix. So we would have X.900 for the first minor version of X.9. If (when) there is a hotfix, that becomes X.901. For a lot of other software it would be X.9.1. Either way, skipping 9 would just cause confusion. I’ve never heard of this superstition and I’ve never seen a software company skip 9 in their versioning.
Was your software meant for internal or corporate use, or was it meant for the average everyday consumer? Internal use is one thing, but the supposed superstition regards the average end user.
It comes off as if there's no good reason to go for a version 4.9 system, when you might as well wait for them to iron out all the bugs and ship a polished off version 5.
For the end user, this is especially important when you'll have to pay for version 4.9, only to have to pay all over again for version 5. It's like in hindsight you knew you were pissing money away on 4.9 in the first place.
This is exactly what happened with Windows ME and Windows 2000, people just pissed their money away on ME. This is also more or less what happened with MacOS 9, people weren't all too pleased with that either.
Even in my own projects, if I've reached version numbering ending in a 9, that generally means I'm working on lots of internal changes, adding lots of features, and it is likely to have bugs. By the time I'm pretty damn sure most of the bugs are ironed out I'll up the version number and might actually let other people use it.
Edit: If the version numbering is for some background library that end users aren't necessarily going to have to directly interact with or inspect, then it hardly matters, just go ahead and go sequentially.
Nope. Our software is sold directly to end users. Pretty much any major company has software releases with 9 in it. Discord, dragon, play station, android, apple (watchOS 9), I could list more. And since a lot of software is moving to SaaS, the paying for a 4.9 won’t matter for those, as you just pay a monthly fee. In terms of OS, Ubuntu, Debian, a lot use 9 in their versions.
As for apple and macOS 9? Idk who wasn’t please with it. Just like ME and XP, macOS X was not well received by a lot of the more techy people. Hell, there are still people holding onto macOS 9 to this day. The difference from 9 to X was pretty significant in terms of UI, and people don’t usually like change.
Again, I’m curious where you are in the world because I have literally never heard of this. And I’m a developer so I feel like if that was a thing in my neck of the woods I or one of my friends would have heard of it.
Matters not where I am, if your software is distributed globally, it helps to avoid superstitious numbers from different regions...
https://hbr.org/2013/07/the-bad-luck-numbers-that-scar
Also, one case in particular, Winamp skipped version 4, because they were known for their skinnable interface.
They didn't want people ever saying the term 'Winamp four skins'... 😂🤣