I think this is something programmers intuitively learn pretty quickly (in fact I'm only just learning that there is actually a name for this idea), but it's an

I think this is something programmers intuitively learn pretty quickly (in fact I'm only just learning that there is actually a name for this idea), but it's an interesting principle to explain to non-developers. Back when I was doing agency work, on more than one occasion I had clients question why modifying some entity to permit multiple related entities instead of one would be more work than they were anticipating. The question was usually along the lines of "would it help if we were to limit related $foobars to three?". But of course, from a structural perspective supporting three related records is usually exactly the same amount of work as supporting arbitrary amounts. Yeah I could probably hack in some fixed amount of extra records, but that's just going to create an increasingly large mess when your business grows and you realise three...twelve...one hundred wasn't enough. Might as well do it properly from the start.