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.
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.