Minecraft: Java Edition has been obfuscated since its release. This obfuscation meant that people couldn’t see our source code. Instead, everything was scrambled – and those who wanted to mod Java Edition had to try and piece together what every class and function in the code did.
Modding is at the heart of Java Edition – and obfuscation makes modding harder. We're excited about this change to remove obfuscation, as it should make it quicker and easier for modders to create and improve mods. Now you won’t have to untangle tricky code or deal with unclear names. What’s more, de-bugging will become more straightforward, and crash logs will actually be readable!
surprisingly fantastic and consumer friendly move from mojang, good on them
Previously, they had the versioning system 1.MAJOR.MINOR, where Major referred to a feature update, and minor referred to bug fixes or other non-breaking technical changes
The first instance where they broke this was 1.16.2 by adding the Piglin Brute, but this was so minor that hardly anyone really cared, and hey, free feature with a minor update!
Well, now they have update "drops" where the minor version means either what it used to, or it's also a feature update, just not as big as a full update.