Although that makes for an interesting conversation, it is a red herring / strawman / false dichotomy with respect to this discussion.
> To us, what's most important is the data, so everything else must serve that end
To you, yes, and I don't fault you for defending that perspective. But the real master who must be served is maximizing "profitability" while maintaining an acceptable level of risk.
Anyone from either side of this argument who ignores the very real advantages from the other side, or the risks from their own side, are the only ones who are totally wrong. (Which would make the author of the original article the one that is most "wrong" in this discussion, as far as I'm concerned.)
I don't disagree with you. The point of the hypothetical situation is to dislodge a naive programmer from the sense that the code is the most important artifact and the database is just storage, a servant. I agree with you and jshen, that reality is nuanced and turns on the business, the system as a whole.
> To us, what's most important is the data, so everything else must serve that end
To you, yes, and I don't fault you for defending that perspective. But the real master who must be served is maximizing "profitability" while maintaining an acceptable level of risk.
Anyone from either side of this argument who ignores the very real advantages from the other side, or the risks from their own side, are the only ones who are totally wrong. (Which would make the author of the original article the one that is most "wrong" in this discussion, as far as I'm concerned.)