The target market for this is me - it’s an exercise in getting it off my chest and giving me a place to link to!
I think there’s a general problem in technology where people no longer get exposed to the underlying technologies upon which they work. The most striking example of this is with computers generally - we’ve optimised the experience to the point where the next generation doesn’t have to sit, fight with and then understand things like drivers or software errors.
In the scope of web development, this tends to take the form that a lot of developers are introduced to interacting with databases through an ORM - obscuring and confusing what the database is doing and causing a bunch of suboptimal stuff along the way.
I suspect that “the kids don’t know the underlying technology anymore” is a cry that echos throughout the ages - a bit like the classic Socrates “books are ruining kids as they don’t need to memorise anything anymore”, but still, I think there’s always value in understanding the underpinnings of the technology you use.
So - what will this guide contain? A mix of things, I expect the quality to jump around the place as I don’t have an developer with an “ideal” amount of knowledge in mind. Ideally a developer reading this will come out with a better understanding of how to optimise their database.
With that in mind, let’s go!