I just want to say that I really enjoyed this discussion. The argument that “embeds has_many should behave as closely as possible to a normal has_many” is very strong and was enough to make me re-think my data model decision.
That said, the reality is nil and empty list are two different things, conceptually. Imagine a scenario where you want to model out an optional white list of some sort.
nilwould mean “I’m not using the whitelist; allow everyone in”[]would mean, I don’t want to let anyone in (no one is on the list)["foo"]would mean, “I only want “foo” to be allowed in”
I am now seeing that you could only have this data model w/ an embedded structure of somewhere since, as this thread points out, a has_many has no null concept; you’d have to add a second field is_using_whitelist (which avoids a “magic nil” which, to be fair, is a smell w/ what I was hoping to do.)
