Show HN: UUIDs that are Shakespearean, grammatically correct sentences

I built something like this for Python[1]. To get UUID-like uniqueness requires often way too many words, even if the Shakespearean-style might make this easier to remember (but also increadibly difficult for non-native speakers to understand).<p>For human-id I just went with groups of the 100 most common adjetives, nouns and verbs combined together in roughly the order they would appear in a sentence.<p>The output is nonsenese, of course, but I hope the combination of words understandable to anyone with a basic knowlegde of English might help.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;orf&#x2F;human_id" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;orf&#x2F;human_id</a>

Interesting project however clearly I am uncultured swine if these are considered &quot;easy to remember&quot;, I wonder if it would work with something more lowbrow. Simpsons anymore?

What is the use case for having to remember UUIDs?<p>I can see how it might speed up writing say, SQL queries if you don&#x27;t have to look up the UUID but not sure that this warrants the effort of committing this to memory.

Added this to my UUID as a Service API! [0] Just add ?readable to any endpoint! Eg. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uuid.rocks&#x2F;json?readable" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uuid.rocks&#x2F;json?readable</a><p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uuid.rocks&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;uuid.rocks&#x2F;</a>

You can get away with calling it &quot;Shakespearean&quot; when UUIDs map to rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter.

&gt;&quot;Drucill Hubert Lewse the Comer of Avera rejoices Fiann Craggy Florie and 5 hard trouts&quot;<p>This is considered shakespearean? Cool idea, but i think the implementation needs some work.

You&#x27;re going to have to copy and paste these anyway (no chance in hell of remembering them) so don&#x27;t see what they get you over an UUID.

There&#x27;s also RFC1751 [<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tools.ietf.org&#x2F;html&#x2F;rfc1751" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tools.ietf.org&#x2F;html&#x2F;rfc1751</a>].<p>A slightly different take on the same sort of problem.

&gt; it&#x27;s impossible to remember 32 random characters in UUID<p>Is it, though?<p>Plenty of folks memorise 16-digit credit card numbers - I&#x27;ve known retail employees who can recite those back after reading them just once.<p>Back when I was a sysadmin, I taught myself to type 25-digit Windows product keys from memory.<p>32 digits doesn&#x27;t seem an unreasonable stretch, given time and practice.

Interesting project. Getting a reading in radio spelling is easy to do. But getting correct sentences out of a random predefined length string is way harder.

What does it mean for a sentence to be &quot;Shakespearean correct&quot;? Do the generated strings necessarily contain 10 syllables?

This is a fun project, but for practical purposes I think the PGP Word List [1] would be more useful. It encodes any bytes (UUID or otherwise) as common words from a list chosen for distinct sounds.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PGP_word_list" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;PGP_word_list</a>

I&#x27;ve been ideating about a base-48 (KJNTPBMYRVSH vs AIOU) version of decimal ids. Ids like &quot;sunihuvi&quot; or &quot;panimaso&quot; which are (hopefully) memorable and easy to pronounce with any accent. 5 letters can encode till 254803968.<p>Algorithm wizards, can I get error correction if I dedicate a character for that?

Why would you want this?<p>The entire point of UUIDs is I can quickly generate them knowing that they will be universally unique, I don’t need to check for their existence anywhere.<p>This dramatically increases the likelihood of collision to the point I can almost certainly guarantee that they won’t be unique in any non-trivial context.

If I had the stamina to learn Shakespeare by heart I would start with the Bard himself, thank you. :-)

Interesting project!<p>However, an online demo will be nice to have.

Yawn, why re-invent the wheel ?<p>UUID = --&gt; universally unique &lt;-- identifier<p>Why reduce the entropy just to make it look pretty ?<p>As for the people who say oh, but I can&#x27;t remember&#x2F;recognise &quot;e0e93156-c68b-493d-bf31-19048db7dd9e&quot;...<p>Well sure, but git invented that wheel before you. Just use the last 11 characters for local discussions&#x2F;notes&#x2F;whatever.<p>Finally, what about people who are non-native&#x2F;fluent in English ?<p>&quot;e0e93156-c68b-493d-bf31-19048db7dd9e&quot; flows accross borders and languages<p>&quot;Romeo Romeo Where For Art Thou Romeo&quot; could easily be meaningless gibberish for a non-native&#x2F;fluent English speaker, and also opens up totally un-necessary issues of pronunciation and spelling.<p>There is also the possibility certain words might mean something different in another language. Such as the famous Colgate in Spanish which means &quot;go hang yourself&quot; !