The computational techniques from Automatic Differentiation use these types of entities to calculate derivatives exactly without approximating infinite (limiting) processes.
Calculus can be done constructively without infinite limiting processes purely algebraically using these nilpotents. And from a geometric interpretation there is nothing nonsensical about a tangent line to a curve.
Also you don't differentiate numbers (real or rational), you can only differentiate functions.
Also the idea of a actual infinity is a poetic mathematical one. It doesn't have to fit reality. The issue is whether it is useful and to what extent.