Modern Full-Stack Development

 A Quick Aside: Semantic Versioning
The dependencies section also lists the version(s) of each dependency, using a 
technique called semantic versioning (often called SemVer). SemVer versions are in the 
form major.minor.patch.
In this model, changes in the major number are meant to represent an update that 
contains breaking changes that would require changes to your code to remediate.  
Chapter 1   Server-Side aCtion: node and npM

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Changes to the minor number are intended to constitute an update that is backward- 
compatible but which provides new functionality and, optionally, contains old 
functionality that while still functional is now deprecated and will be removed in a future 
release (minor number changes can also represent major internal refactoring but which 
produces no outward-facing changes). The patch number represents bug fix changes only.
On top of this, the tilde (~), caret (^), and asterisk (*) characters have special 
meaning. Tilde is used when dealing with patch versions, while caret is used when 
dealing with minor versions, and asterisk has the typical “wildcard” meaning you’re 
probably familiar with in other contexts.
To give you a very brief overview, here are some of the most common dependency 
versions you might see in package.json, using Express as an example:
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