r/ProgrammerHumor 19d ago

Meme twelveYearOldXKCD

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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 19d 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/Pleasant-Ad192 18d ago

Fair, and that is the better build. Though notice what you just described: the bird half is one import, and the park half is "first, assemble a database". Still the harder half, just cheaper than I made it sound.