When I encounter a version number I mostly want to know either:

  - what are the major characteristics of the program
  - how old is the program

Traditional software versioning helps in the first case: they bump version after a big event (new feature, rewrite, etc). Date based versioning helps in the second case. (I prefer date based versioning over traditional or semver.) Their numbering system doesn't help anyone in any case. It's just... there. A noise.

E.g. just this article title on HN: "Java 27: What's New?" doesn't tell you whether Java 27 is old or new. "Java 26.1: What's New?" would.