What do you mean backwards-date? It's how someone would do it naturally. Like when we say one thousand, we do 1000, not 0001, most significant to least significant. I suppose we use mostly little-endian computers, so perhaps you'd expect to see it as 01.32 to correspond, but that would seem quite confusing to everyone, wouldn't it? A point-release would be 1.01.32? And the tenth point-release (god forbid) would be 01.01.32? I suppose we could put it at the end and get 01.32.1 but that then has it go up and down all over the place.

I think what they picked is quite natural: most-sig to least-sig. 23.10.1 has year.month.point-release