I don't disagree with you. The point of the hypothetical situation is to dislodge a naive programmer from the sense that the code is the most important artifact

I don't disagree with you. The point of the hypothetical situation is to dislodge a naive programmer from the sense that the code is the most important artifact and the database is just storage, a servant. I agree with you and jshen, that reality is nuanced and turns on the business, the system as a whole.