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UUIDs are obsolete in the age of Docker

leonid.shevtsov.me

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Re: UUIDs are obsolete in the age of Docker

#3
> this is only correct about UUID version 1. However, it is what most applications use.

This is a bold claim and doesn't match my experience at all. UUIDv4 is all I see, everywhere, everyday.

That's also a big enough caveat to put in the title: if you have a beef with UUIDv1, say UUIDv1 is obsolete.

Re: UUIDs are obsolete in the age of Docker

#4
As the article points out, this is only an issue with UUIDv1. They claim "However, it is what most applications use." but I have no idea how true this is. I was under the impression that the vast majority of UUID generators were v4 by default. For example:

Postgres only offers random uuid generation (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/15/functions-uuid.html).

The `uuidgen` CLI tool, at least for modern versions (I have not checked historically), says (from https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/uuidgen.1.html): "By default uuidgen will generate a random-based UUID if a high-quality random number generator is present." (later it lists /dev/random as such a generator, present on almost all systems)

What's an example of a system that generates v1 uuids by default?

Re: UUIDs are obsolete in the age of Docker

#6
post #3

> this is only correct about UUID version 1. However, it is what most applications use. This is a bold claim and doesn't match my experience at all. UUIDv4 is all I see, everywhere, everyday. That's also a big enough caveat to put in the title: if you have a beef with UUIDv1, say UUIDv1 is obsolete.

Yeah I agree that this isn't true, every popular uuid package uses V4 by default and all the places I've worked used V4 when they were using UUIDs.

Re: UUIDs are obsolete in the age of Docker

#9
post #2

Is anyone even still using non-random UUIDs? Every application I've ever seen them use is using v4.

Yeah, everything I’ve seen (and written) which uses UUIDs uses UUIDv4, and the main alternative for similar use seems to be ULID, not any of the other UUID versions.
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