does seem to me that the author is a hobbyist or a junior developer with little real word experience Advocates of natural keys are aware that many people spend

does seem to me that the author is a hobbyist or a junior developer with little real word experience Advocates of natural keys are aware that many people spend their careers creating auto increment primary keys everywhere. When combining disparate systems within a single organization, natural keys help. The biggest headache being difficult-to-identify duplicate data. However, this headache can be avoided if you have a natural candidate key. So just be sure to add unique constraints where appropriate, and the auto increment primary key (e.g. to make ActiveRecord happy) won't cause problems.