UUIDs: awkward, pointless cargo cult.
- the dash formatting is meaningless
- the only useful variant other than "all random" is "time sortable" and it's only part of uuidV7
- hexadecimal is neither compact nor human friendly
- the dash formatting is meaningless
- the only useful variant other than "all random" is "time sortable" and it's only part of uuidV7
- hexadecimal is neither compact nor human friendly
How are uuids pointless?
Hexadecimal is much more human friendly than say, binary.
- Hexadecimal is bloated compared to other encodings, low entropy per digit, inefficient when e.g. embedded in URLs
- Is not memorable for humans, does not use the entire alphabet, and has no redundancy or checksum to detect typoes.
Pretty much anything else would be better, and is. Hence, it is a cargo cult.
I've never seen a database so unusable as one that was indexed by non sortable uuids.
I hate it every time I have to use it. It signals bad taste and is a warning sign to look out for more pointless code drudgery.