I don't buy it. If the only point was managing rookie errors, etc., the blog post shouldn't have been 15~ paragraphs of technical discussion and 2 paragraphs at the bottom of "my point is ..." You can't advocate that people just ignore 80% of the article because they're "not the point of the post."
I'm sure a good chunk of tech workers are worried that when an influential blogger writes something like this a couple hundred developers will Google 3NF and start opening PRs.
It's a narrative. A story. She told it in that way to lure people who get hooked on technical discussion, and then make the point that they probably would have missed or ignored. Without a narrative example, she could have just said "I made mistakes too, live and learn" but she chose to provide an example before presenting the thesis.
And hey, what's so bad about people learning about 3NF? Are you not supposed to know what that is until you're some mythical ninth level DBA?
Sure, I don't mind that the hook, and controversial posts often create the most educational discussion. I only take exception to the idea that we shouldn't debate it because it's "not the point." (specifically for technical advice; being over-pedantic is a thing).
I certainly don't mean to criticize the author or say that they shouldn't have posted the article. If articles needed to be 100% correct then no-one has any business writing them. And it's still open to debate whether the article is even wrong or misleading.
> Are you not supposed to know what that is until you're some mythical ninth level DBA?
I think the world might be a better place if people _did_ wait until they were ninth level DBAs :p
Jokes aside, I have no problem with people learning 3NF. I'm more concerned that people can be too quick to take this sort of rule-of-thumb advice to heart (myself included). And in my opinion, database optimization is too complex to fit well into simple rules like "normalize when your query looks like this." My only 'rules' for high-frequency/critical tables and queries is "test, profile, load test, and take nothing for granted." But I know just enough to know that I don't know enough about SQL databases to intuit performance.
If she told it to lure people who get hooked on technical discussion, then it’s not fair for you to complain about said people analyzing said technical discussion.
But if she told it to show people who get hooked on technical discussion that this often makes them miss a more important point, then they certainly proved her right.
The problem with her point is that it doesn't go anywhere. Mentorship is obviously good and ageism is obviously bad, and she doesn't have specific suggestions on how to solve any of the problems, so the hook is the most substantial thing to talk about.
I'm sure a good chunk of tech workers are worried that when an influential blogger writes something like this a couple hundred developers will Google 3NF and start opening PRs.