[wlug] Why I Don’t Like Checking Version Numbers

Some major web browsers will soon be hitting version 100. The rollover to a 3-digit version number is going to trigger a repeat of what happened when version numbers rolled from 9 to 10 -- some sites turned out to have buggy version checking based simplistically on strings rather than numeric values, and misbehave <https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/browsers_version_100_websites_bug/>. As a matter of habit, I have long been reluctant to condition behaviour in my own code based on writing code to look up version numbers of things. I prefer to include some kind of check that more directly determines the existence of relevant functionality.