Rusty Rogers' Clankers

You think you’ve got them droids figured out … and then they throw you a curve ball and it stops making sense.

https://jalopnik.com/we-need-to-talk-about-star-wars-droid-names-right-godda-1786060642

How you like them apples ?
Remember C-3P0 ?
That’s a Cybot Galactica 3P0 series protocol droid.
So we’re back to square one …

And as a reminder why organics are terrible at remembering droid names :
C3-P0 and C-3Po are two different droids.

Some names definitely appear to be related to their function (T-series tactical droids) and others appear to have their manufacturer as part of their naming convention (Cybot => C in C-3PO)

Maybe we should invent our own solution instead ?
To quote the quote from the Jalopnik article :

… droid names are usually fragments of much longer serial numbers. He uses G8-R3 as an example, speculating that his real name might have been something like “R5-X41238-G8-R3-3124-D2.”

Interesting, isn’t it ?
Like clonetroopers droids have identifiers that are more than short ident used by organics in their language. A string of a few dozen characters is not a problem in binary languages used by droids amongst themselves. And it should be sufficient to identify every possible droid in the galaxy.

We’ve got actual real-world / non-fictional examples of this sort of thing.
USB-devices have their own ‘rules’ that describe how they are identified ( source : usb-drivers designations )

Then there’s another one : the MAC-address
Those seemingly random numbers do have reasons to exist (and they’re hideously complicated ). And like the USB ident there is a manufacturer specific code hidden inside. It’s not human readable, but then it doesn’t need to be. It merely exists to ensure that no address can overlap without needing to check it every single time. Google is your friend if you feel the need for more info.

And finally there is one that may be familliar to programmers : GuID (Global Unique Identifier)

Food for thought ?
I’d say yes … ’till next time.