RANDOM is a quite common word, like in life as in programming languages, but it also has human interpretations which can lead to false expectations . . .
a random function doesn’t necessary return a unique result, it should be seen as unpredictable result, let’s say you have 10 words and want a random pick, the random functions does it, but, eventually you will see ten times in a row the first word, pretty much like roulette
since that might not be desired, e.g. on a commercial site you want to show on each visit another “random product” to the customers, but not repeatedly the same product
so now we see that we are not exactly want it to be random, we want it do be different from last time, in order to get that done we need to query the product table, create the product list and pick one to show it and take it out of the list, next visit gets 100% another product, because the former isn’t in the list anymore
we wrote our stray function as valid alternative to common random functions
recap, we create a list, pick one after the other, when the list is empty we create a new one, we repeat the process as many times we want
of course, seeing the same product can still occure after refreshing the list and starting over, depending on the number of products you have it happens sooner or later, that the same product hits the same visitor is far less possible than it happens with a simple random function
random versus our stray function is a concept, which one you use depends on the desired outcome
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