It is high time we let go of the Mersenne Twister (2019)
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderBut it has such a cool name! Sure mrg32k3a has a smaller state, runs faster and has a quick skip ahead function but L'Ecuyer just didn't put enough effort into the marketing.
As just a datapoint from some random person, I needed a pseudo-random number generator just last week. My use-case is semi-embedded, with two applications running on different hardware and operating systems, that both needed to generate streams of the same random data. I first naively went with just rand() to get it running, but obviously there's no guerantee that two completely different platforms' C libraries have the same PRNGs. So that didn't work. Like many (?), the Mersenne Twister is…
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 272
- Total comments
- 146
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-10-16 | It is high time we let go of the Mersenne Twister | Anon84 | 1 | 0 |
| 2019-11-30 | It Is High Time We Let Go of the Mersenne Twister | beefhash | 4 | 0 |
| 2020-11-20 | It is high time we let go of the Mersenne Twister (2019)First breakout · Best thread | henning | 162 | 92 |
| 2022-03-09 | It is high time we let go of the Mersenne Twister (2019)Latest 20+ point return | rdpintqogeogsaa | 99 | 52 |
| 2025-07-01 | It is high time we let go of the Mersenne Twister | ibobev | 4 | 1 |
| 2025-10-28 | It is high time we let go of the Mersenne Twister (2019) | rdpintqogeogsaa | 2 | 1 |