alt Hacker NewsYou can't take into account the fact that things change when you don't know what those changes might be. You might end up needing to either rebuild a new database, have some painful migration, or support two codepaths to work with both types of keys.
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groundzeros2015 • yesterday at 3:59 PM
You can’t design something by trying to anticipate all future changes. things will change and break.
In my personal design sense, I have found keeping away generality actually helps my code last longer (based on more concrete ideas) and easier to change when those days come.
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Network protocol designers know better and by default embed protocol version number in message format spec.
I guess you can assign 3-4 bits for identifier version number as well.
And yes - for long living data dealing with compatibility issues is inevitable so you have to take that into account from the very beginning.