Where would this be useful? I am not trying to bring the article down but I'm genuinely interested in knowing where/how people would use this. It seems like just locally modifying a payload would be more efficient?
Arrays require some care to handle which is why I'm got some extensions in my client, but a super power that JSON patching enables is that it can be algebraic in nature. That it, we can define a patching which is associative (another extension where you preserve nulls) such that (X + da) + db = X + (da + db) = X + dc where da + db + dc
This allows you to leverage flow control when congestion happens (especially on mobile connections).
[{"op": "replace", "path":"/spec/template/metadata/annotations/restarted-at", "value": "'$(date -Iseconds)'"}]
to restart/redeploy.