Stop Using Timestamps as IDs — Your Distributed System Is One Race Condition Away From Chaos
Auto-increment integers, UUID v4, and created_at-based ordering are everywhere — and they all have silent failure modes in distributed systems. This post breaks down exactly where each approach breaks, why it matters, and which ID strategies (ULIDs, Snowflake IDs, UUID v7) actually hold up under real production load.
Distributed SystemsDatabaseBackend
