spec VS magit

Can use ULID to "fix" some issues

https://github.com/ulid/spec

Both ULID and UUID v7 have a time code component which can be extracted.

It would be best for indexing to store the actual value in binary, though not strictly necessary as these later UUID standards (unlike conventional UUIDs) use time code prefixes (so indexing clusters.)

https://uuid7.com/

https://github.com/ulid/spec

UUIDv7 is a nice idea, and should probably be what people use by default instead of UUIDv4.

For the curious:

* UUIDv4 are 128 bits long, 122 bits of which are random, with 6 bits used for the version. Traditionally displayed as 32 hex characters with 4 dashes, so 36 alphanumeric characters, and compatible with anything that expects a UUID.

* UUIDv7 are 128 bits long, 48 bits encode a unix timestamp with millisecond precision, 6 bits are for the version, and 74 bits are random. You're expected to display them the same as other UUIDs, and should be compatible with basically anything that expects a UUID. (Would be a very odd system that parses a UUID and throws an error because it doesn't recognise v7, but I guess it could happen, in theory?)

* ULIDs (https://github.com/ulid/spec) are 128 bits long, 48 bits encode a unix timestamp with millisecond precision, 80 bits are random. You're expected to display them in Crockford's base32, so 26 alphanumeric characters. Compatible with almost everything that expects a UUID (since they're the right length). Spec has some dumb quirks if followed literally but thankfully they mostly don't hurt things.

* KSUIDs (https://github.com/segmentio/ksuid) are 160 bits long, 32 bits encode a timestamp with second precision and a custom epoch of May 13th, 2014, and 128 bits are random. You're expected to display them in base62, so 27 alphanumeric characters. Since they're a different length, they're not compatible with UUIDs.

I quite like KSUIDs; I think base62 is a smart choice. And while the timestamp portion is a trickier question, KSUIDs use 32 bits which, with second precision (more than good enough), means they won't overflow for well over a century. Whereas UUIDv7s use 48 bits, so even with millisecond precision (not needed) they won't overflow for something like 8000 years. We can argue whether 100 years us future proof enough (I'd argue it probably is), but 8000 years is just silly. Nobody will ever generate a compliant UUIDv7 with any of the first several bits aren't 0. The only downside to KSUIDs is the length isn't UUID compatible (and arguably, that they don't devote 6 bits to a compliant UUID version).

Still feels like there's room for improvement, but for now I think I'd always pick UUIDv7 over UUIDv4 unless there's an very specific reason not to.

I'd love for Postgres to adopt ULID as a first class variant of the same basic 128bit wide binary optimized column type they use for UUIDs, but I don't expect they will, while its "popular" its not likely popular enough to have support for them to maintain it in the long run... Also the smart money ahead of time would have been for the ULID spec to sacrifice a few data bits to leave the version specifying sections of the bit field layout unused in the ULID binary spec (https://github.com/ulid/spec#binary-layout-and-byte-order) for the sake of future compatibility with "proper" UUIDs... Performing one big bulk bitfield modification to a PostgreSQL column would have been much less painful than re-computing appropriate UUIDv7 (or UUIDv8s for some reason) and then having to perform a primary key update on every row in the table.

Many people had the same idea. For example ULID https://github.com/ulid/spec is more compact and stores the time so it is lexically ordered.

Then the slowness that you're seeing is probably Windows-specific, and that's why everyone else is telling you that Magit is actually fast.

WSL might make things faster.[1] IIUC, the problem is that starting new processes is much slower on Windows than on Linux/Unix and Magit relies heavily on that. This seems to have plagued Git tooling more generally but maybe this got fixed since then.[2]

[1] https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/58444

[2] https://github.com/magit/magit/issues/2395#issuecomment-1710...

You'll want to invest the time in learning Magit, which will change your life once you get the hang of it (and I was a heavy user of Fugitive in Vim previously!), and it's unlikely you'll find a better integration with GDB anywhere else on the planet than with Emacs, though I can't say that empirically. You just need to take the plunge and start learning it, then cut over and take the hit in productivity one day when you're feeling adventurous. You'll ultimately become far more powerful than you've ever been. Especially if you delve into elisp over time. I use Spacemacs, which is bloated and has bugs, but it has so many features that I haven't undertaken the massive endeavor to replace it from scratch yet.

> Even in this article just a few sentences after stating we should start from first principles he then jumps into the assumption of the "desktop".

Agree. Although I can see how the idea of "first principles" can be a very difficult starting point. A blank sheet of paper is a scary monster.

There's a huge breadth and depth of non-"desktop" GUIs out there, some (like smartphones) are even wildly successful. It's good to explore them for inspiration. Some of my favourites:

- Arcan (https://arcan-fe.com/about/) - I won't attempt to summarize, just dive in!

- SailfishOS (https://sailfishos.org/) - mobile UI focused on interaction through gestures / swipes; I've used it as my daily driver for a couple years.

- Speaking of mobiles, classic Nokia UIs allowed you to navigate to a specific item in the menu by pressing the corresponding digit on the dial pad. Once you learned where a particular item is, accessing e.g. your SMS inbox was extremely quick.

- Apple Watch / WatchOS (https://www.apple.com/watchos/) - I've always loved the idea of a device where one of the primary interaction methods was a wheel/dial of some sort. The watch even gives you context-sensitive tactile feedback.

- ZUIs in general (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooming_user_interface) and the work of Jef Raskin in particular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_(software) - this is the guy who helped design the Macintosh, but his other work took a radically different route.

- Magit (https://magit.vc/). Many common git operations are reduced to a couple of keystrokes; the obscure features are more discoverable, and the cumbersome procedures (such as rebasing, or staging individual hunks) become simple and intuitive. Also check out transient (https://github.com/magit/transient), which is the "UI toolkit" that powers Magit.

This can be done most comfortably with org-mode in emacs. It offers a lot of features, and they all operate on plain text. There are also nice integrations for git and languagetool, but I guess those are less exclusive.

How does this differ from https://magit.vc/ ?

I would rather see innovative tools that lessen our dependency on 50+ year old tech. This is still a glorified teletype. It uses AI to autosuggest git commands? Contrast with Magit[1], which (while it has a tiny bit of a learning curve, but also nowhere near 23M in funding) actually makes interacting with git a pleasure.

[1]: https://magit.vc

Also was using Emacs (org-mode)[https://orgmode.org] for years with (Magit)[https://magit.vc] package for git. I feel org-mod is a precursor to Roam Research, Obsidian, et al. Hit the spot for years but I wanted editing on mobile so that’s why I’m here. :)