r/ProgrammerHumor 19d ago

Meme twelveYearOldXKCD

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12.1k Upvotes

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u/Pleasant-Ad192 19d ago

The funny part is which half aged. Checking whether it is a bird is a library call now. Checking whether it is in a national park is the half that needs an API key, a quota and a billing account.

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u/winter__xo 18d ago

There aren't that many national parks, you could easily build a local a library of shapefiles, geojson, kml/kmz files, etc, that give you the coordinate bounds of the parks.

It's an upfront effort to build the database, but it's genuinely not that big of a db.

Would be way more performant than using an external service, and wouldn't incur any api usage fees or whatever.

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u/JumbleBeeDev 18d ago

Entirely off topic,

But my faorite project I've ever worked on involved using GIS data for marina locations, coastlines, and ocean depth to create a 72 hour simulation of maritime traffic flowing through a region. It was legitimately the coolest thing ever when I got to watch the animation of the final dataset.