That's fair, but some database systems have added functionality to avoid this specific problem. In Oracle, MySQL, and MariaDB, you can mark a column as INVISIBL

That's fair, but some database systems have added functionality to avoid this specific problem. In Oracle, MySQL, and MariaDB, you can mark a column as INVISIBLE to exclude it from SELECT *. It's still not a great practice to use SELECT *, but at least this gives you a way to add columns without breaking existing applications. It's also useful when you plan to remove a column, to test in advance whether anything using SELECT * would break without that column there.