@eloffd I have seen this in production. I actually was assigned to fix a bug that was due to this. The ids became so big that float was unable to represent them with precision of 1 int and was rounding them to the nearest float. It was a big mess!
"It takes a particular kind of person to stay with the [programming] profession [..] High tolerance for failure. Failure inducing a sense of intrigue. A rush of pleasure when something works. This special sort of drive can overcome anyone." – Ellen Ullman
Software spreads like a virus, and any software org needs an immune system to avoid getting infected with every widely used software out there, much of which isn't good for its needs - or, quite often, is basically good for nothing. Centralized infrastructure is key to immunity
In code and in many kinds of text, a large part of readability is the ability to not read most of it, to quickly learn where to look and what to skip. A big point of structured programming or modules is the not-read ability they provide