Re: use of the random library

[glen e. p. ropella]

address@hidden writes:
 > These global objects were provided specifically to make
 > porting apps from the Swarm beta release easier.  Given
 > this objective, and with the wonderful wisdom of
 > hindsight, the semantic behaviour of trying to pick a
 > distinct initial generator state on each run should
 > arguably have been retained.  As Sven has said,
 > changing that was certainly not *his* idea (my memory
 > is a bit fogged, but the idea was almost certainly mine
 > - mea culpa!).

I can't let Barry take all the blame, here.  We decided that it was a
little too aggressive to just rip out the old default random support.
So, we left that in (put it back in, actually).  But, we really wanted
users to understand that random number generation is difficult and
deserving of alot of thought.  Hence the "less-than-intelligent"
seeding.  It's possible that we should've shouted this louder than we
did.

 > them. I still harbour the idea that they may well
 > disappear in a future swarm release; I urge people to
 > take the note quoted above seriously, and *not* to use
 > these objects in new apps, and to *remove* usage from
 > existing apps at the first convenient opportunity.  

I agree.  I want them removed, as well.  And, it's best to give
the users a little time to transition.

glen