Meme transcription: Panel 1. Two images of JSON, one is the empty object, one is an object in which the key name maps to the value null. Caption: “Corporate needs you to find the difference between this picture and this picture”
Panel 2. The Java backend dev answers, “They’re the same picture.”
Sure, in a specific scenario where you decide they’re equivalent they are, congratulations. They’re not generally.
Did you read the comments above?
You can’t just ignore context and proclaim some universal truth, which just happens to be your opinion.
At the (SQL) database level, if you are using null in any sane way, it means “this value exists but is unknown”. Conflating that with “this value does not exist” is very dangerous. JavaScript, the closest thing there is to a reference implementation for json serialization, drops attributes set to undefined, but preserves null. You seem to be insisting that null only means “explicit omission”, but that isn’t the case. Null means a variety of subtly different things in different contexts. It’s perfectly fine to explicitly define null and missing as equivalent in any given protocol, but assuming it is not.
At the (SQL) database level, if you are using null in any sane way, it means “this value exists but is unknown”.
Null at the SQL means that the value isn’t there, idk where you’re getting that from. SQL doesn’t have anything like JS’s undefined, there’s no other way to represent a missing value in sql other than null (you could technically decide on certain values for certain types, like an empty string, but that’s not something SQL defines).
Again, did you actually read the comments?
Is SQL an API contract using JSON? I hardly think so.
Java does not distinguish between null and non-existence within an API contract. Neither does Python. JS is the weird one here for having two different identifiers.
Why are you so hellbent on proving something universal that doesn’t apply for the case specified above? Seriously, you’re the “well, ackshually” meme in person. You are unable or unwilling to distinguish between abstract and concrete. And that makes you pretty bad engineers.
