While it's clear that the author of the linked article isn't familiar with MySQL administration, it's worth noting that the most recent versions of MySQL finall

While it's clear that the author of the linked article isn't familiar with MySQL administration, it's worth noting that the most recent versions of MySQL finally support instant column adds: https://mysqlserverteam.com/mysql-8-0-innodb-now-supports-instant-add-column/ https://mysqlserverteam.com/mysql-8-0-innodb-now-supports-in... That won't save us from needing extra tooling like pt-online-schema-change or gh-ost for other types of schema changes in high availability environments, but it's a step in the right direction.