I was also confused by this as a commit id is deterministic. I suspect that the OP may be confused about how git hashes are computed.
But thinking deeper, given that the hash is computed from a small amount of entropy (the commit time), plus a seed (the committed code changes), and the previous value (previous commit hash), this is actually fairly similar to the definition of a PRNG.
That is to say, it's not an RNG, but for some approximations it's indistinguishable from one.
But thinking deeper, given that the hash is computed from a small amount of entropy (the commit time), plus a seed (the committed code changes), and the previous value (previous commit hash), this is actually fairly similar to the definition of a PRNG.
That is to say, it's not an RNG, but for some approximations it's indistinguishable from one.