PeriodicallyPedantic

Imagine you're writing a CRUD API, which is pretty common.
If null attributes aren't included in the payload, and someone does an update (typically a PATCH), how do you know which fields should be nulled out and which should be ignored?

I agree for many cases the two are semantically equivalent, but it's common enough to not have them be equivalent that I'm surprised that it causes arguments

For many uses it is semantically the same.
But for cases where you need to know if something was intentionally set to null or was simply not set, the difference is enormous.

Ah yes the difference between "unset" and "intentionally set to null", the bane of API devs who work in languages that don't inherently distinguish between the two.

I love when an API takes a json payload, and one of the json fields is a string that contains json, so I have to serialize/deserialze in stages 😭

Who do you want running the country? The litch or the revenant?

Sideshow Bob is way too smart to be compared to trump

I agree it's not the ideal solution, but it's better than most solutions we have, depending on location.

Rooftop solar doesn't only need to be on residential buildings, it can also be on industrial and commercial buildings, which take a significant land area.

One last benefit of most renewable energy that is related to its distributed nature: it's easy to slowly roll out update and replacements. If a new tech emerges you can quickly change your rollout plan to use the new tech, and replace the old tech a little bit at a time, without any energy disruption.
With mega-projects like nuclear reactors, you can't really change direction mid-construction, and you can't just replace the reactors as new tech comes online, because each reactor is a huge part of the energy supply and each one costs a fortune.

Also, according to the doc you shared of land-use, in-store wind power is nearly the same as nuclear, since the ecology between the windmills isn't destroyed.

So while I agree that nuclear absolutely has a place, and that renewables have some undesirable ecological repercussions, they're still generally an excellent solution.

The elephant in the room, though, is that all the renewable solutions I mentioned will require energy storage, to handle demand variation and production variation. The most reliable and economically feasible energy storage is pumped hydro, which will have a similar land usage to hydro power. On the upside, although it has a significant impact, it does not make the land ecological unviable, it just changes what ecosystem will thrive there - so sites must be chosen with care.

Right, like I've said it's not the best solution everywhere. But where it's an option (which is many places) it's a better one. Not solar in the case of grasslands, probably wind. But you get the idea.

Are you displacing whole ecosystems, though?
How much do wind farms affect grasslands and prairies, etc? They'll have an impact for sure, but it's not like the whole place gets paved over.
And solar can get placed on roofs of existing structures. Or distributed so it doesn't affect any one area too much.

I have to admit idk much about sourcing the materials involved in building solar panels and windmills. Idk if they require destructive mining operations.
I imagine that a nuclear reactor would require more concrete, metal, and rate earth magnets that a solar/wind farm, but idk. I likewise don't know the details about mining and refining the various fissile material and nuclear poisons.

The other advantage of renewables is that it's distributed so it's naturally redundant. If it needs to get shut down (repairs, or a problem with the grid) it wont have a big impact.

I like nuclear, and it's certainly the better choice for some locations, but many locations seems better suited for renewable

I agree it absolutely has problems and I hope we come up with a better solution in the near future.

But it's currently the lesser evil. Even though nuclear plants don't need a lot of fuel, getting that fuel is still typically more damaging than creating a water reservoir, or using an existing natural reservoir.

That's fair. But lesser of evils, yanno.

You haven't heard of any advancements in energy storage at all?

Not that we need them, the best energy storage is old AF and excellent