4 ms·

“5 iterations”. That’s…not how it works. You’ve literally just taken “UUID6” and made a bunch of incorrect assumptions.

by cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago

rjh29 2y ago
Explain.
- mort96 2y ago
  They're not "iterations", they're variants. It's not like they made a UUIDv1, then came up with a better idea to make UUIDv2, then improved that and made UUIDv3, etc. They simply have different purposes. UUIDv4, for example, is for when you simply want the UUID to be fully random. UUIDv8 is for when you want to use your own completely custom UUID generation scheme but still want it to fit in to the UUID format. UUIDv7 is for when you want UUIDs which are sortable based on timestamps and have a random component. Other UUID variants work well if you have a known set of machines generating UUIDs and you can give each machine a unique ID to ensure that no two machines will generate the same UUID. Now some UUID versions do supersede others, for example UUIDv7 is pretty much just a better UUIDv1. But UUIDv4, for example, has not been superseded and remains a good choice for some uses.
  - WorldMaker 2y ago
    But UUIDv1 did exist for many years before UUIDv2, v3, v4, and v5 were all built and many years before this final approval of v6, v7, and v8. Even if the variants don't "supersede" each other, live side-by-side and aren't meant to imply a version number like "semantic versioning" and a "proper" succession, the numbers still represent a progression of decades of real time between variant standards and the question remains valid how the designers of v4 especially missed/under-appreciated the changes/fixes/tweaks in v6 and v7 and didn't make such variants then? Hindsight is 20/20 of course, and it is easy to armchair quarterback how "let's keep the timestamp from v1 but use random data like v4" sounds like an obvious variant if you were in the process of designing v4 to "fix/replace" then usages of v1 knowing most of the trouble was just with MAC addresses and most of the advantages to v1 were time-sorting.
    - mort96 2y ago
      I agree that it should seem obvious to introduce a "UUID with sortable timestamp first then a bunch of random bytes" much earlier, probably alongside v4 or something. But then the complaint is, "why did it take many decades before they made this variant", not "why did it take them 7 iterations".
      - WorldMaker 2y ago
        Sure, you are technically correct (as we all know, the best kind of correct), but I think the point is maybe that the comment far above about "7 iterations" was meant to be more "emotionally correct" than technically correct.
        rjh29 2y ago
        It was, thank you.

“5 iterations”. That’s…not how it works. You’ve literally just taken “UUID6” and made a bunch of incorrect assumptions.

rjh29 2y ago

Explain.

mort96 2y ago
They're not "iterations", they're variants. It's not like they made a UUIDv1, then came up with a better idea to make UUIDv2, then improved that and made UUIDv3, etc. They simply have different purposes. UUIDv4, for example, is for when you simply want the UUID to be fully random. UUIDv8 is for when you want to use your own completely custom UUID generation scheme but still want it to fit in to the UUID format. UUIDv7 is for when you want UUIDs which are sortable based on timestamps and have a random component. Other UUID variants work well if you have a known set of machines generating UUIDs and you can give each machine a unique ID to ensure that no two machines will generate the same UUID. Now some UUID versions do supersede others, for example UUIDv7 is pretty much just a better UUIDv1. But UUIDv4, for example, has not been superseded and remains a good choice for some uses.
- WorldMaker 2y ago
  But UUIDv1 did exist for many years before UUIDv2, v3, v4, and v5 were all built and many years before this final approval of v6, v7, and v8. Even if the variants don't "supersede" each other, live side-by-side and aren't meant to imply a version number like "semantic versioning" and a "proper" succession, the numbers still represent a progression of decades of real time between variant standards and the question remains valid how the designers of v4 especially missed/under-appreciated the changes/fixes/tweaks in v6 and v7 and didn't make such variants then? Hindsight is 20/20 of course, and it is easy to armchair quarterback how "let's keep the timestamp from v1 but use random data like v4" sounds like an obvious variant if you were in the process of designing v4 to "fix/replace" then usages of v1 knowing most of the trouble was just with MAC addresses and most of the advantages to v1 were time-sorting.
  - mort96 2y ago
    I agree that it should seem obvious to introduce a "UUID with sortable timestamp first then a bunch of random bytes" much earlier, probably alongside v4 or something. But then the complaint is, "why did it take many decades before they made this variant", not "why did it take them 7 iterations".
    - WorldMaker 2y ago
      Sure, you are technically correct (as we all know, the best kind of correct), but I think the point is maybe that the comment far above about "7 iterations" was meant to be more "emotionally correct" than technically correct.
      - rjh29 2y ago
        It was, thank you.