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One thing I've always wondered about this "not even 1.0" mentality is, why is a version number so significant? Sure it's an easy proxy, but it's not perfect. That number could be arbitrarily changed tomorrow and the maturity of the project hasn't necessarily changed.

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Most versions don't mean much on their face -- every project has a different definition and way of versioning (usually undefined and fairly arbitrary, or based on client feature requirement and need-to-deploy).

But 1.0 is special -- pretty much everyone agrees on its meaning: it's ready for others to use it, and I'm willing to stand by it.

Sub-1.0 is also special, and generally agreed upon -- no one should consider this production-ready, and I'm not ready to defend it.

To me sub-1.0 means you can't rely on even point releases being non-breaking changes, more than the suitability for production use... though that difference sees some overlap.

Using node as much as I have, I've gotten used to updating dependencies fairly often and spending maybe a day a month on keeping things updated and smooth. I also tend to dig into nested dependencies and my bundle sizes (more on the front end).

I mean, they could be, theoretically, but generally authors try to make the number a good reflection of the project's status.

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