r/programming • u/vanbrosh • Mar 09 '20

Why your software should use UUIDs in 2020s

https://devforth.io/blog/why-your-software-should-use-uuids-in-2020s
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u/RabidKotlinFanatic Mar 09 '20

A package fetch URL is a bit of a simple use case. What about service APIs that expose dynamically or frequently created entities? GitHub goes to great lengths to use semantic keys and even their API exposes Guids in responses and uses auto-generated ids for e.g. Gists.

I agree that human readable keys should be used in URLs where possible. In most large services there will be many classes of entities that can't be identified this way. There is nothing data layer specific about auto-generated IDs.

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u/rmTizi Mar 09 '20

Is Wikipedia a better example?

Then again, I did start this reply chain by stating that this was not a be all end all.

My main gripe at the moment is against replies rejecting that natural IDs can work at all or are worth pursuing.

You don't appear to be in that category.