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Some of the heavyweight ones are nice as far as human readability goes. Consider the AutoSlugField (in Django). Say you have an object, Item(name='Phillip Lim Pleated printed silk-chiffon dress', description='...).

Which link is less scary?

http://secret-project/item/phillip-lim-pleated-printed-silk-...

or

http://secret-project/item/47a61d7c-dde1-11df-ba19-0026c72a6...

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Funny! I've come to associate slug-type URLs (like the former, that have no numbers or anything in the URL) with content-free websites that have been SEO'd. The latter is also scary though, because it's too MANY random-ass numbers. I have sort've come to expect a combination of a numeric identifier and readable words for reputable sites.

The second link although ugly is less "guessable" if you want to skimp on the authorization check. That aside, sometimes an entity might not have a natural key that can be slugified (e.g. an invoice), in which case UUID is better. Also, using a generating/looking-up a UUID might be faster?

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