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Why AO3 Was Down

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151 points danso | 1 comments | 05 Jul 25 02:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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notorandit ◴[05 Jul 25 05:15 UTC] No.44470235[source]▶
> typical database column

Typical for 70s and 80s.

Honestly, designing a 21st century database is a different thing if compared to back then.

You can use 128 bit integers, provided that you really want to use integers. And maybe you put a timestamp along.

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1. rsynnott ◴[05 Jul 25 10:05 UTC] No.44471545[source]▶
The website appears to date from 2008. This was a _very_ common latent bug at that point, particularly because Rails would basically force you to implement it. I assume this got fixed at some point, but for a long time all ActiveRecord models had an autoincrementing ID, which had to be a signed 32 bit int. There were scary monkey-patching workarounds if you wanted something more sensible.

EDIT: And, yes, it is apparently Rails! https://fanlore.org/wiki/Archive_of_Our_Own#Timeline