I may be wrong here, but I think the difference is largely around how things are viewed differently between experts and non-experts. Experts understand that "e

I may be wrong here, but I think the difference is largely around how things are viewed differently between experts and non-experts. Experts understand that "estimate the number of rows" and "count the number of rows" are two different operations. They know that "count()" is supposed to count, not estimate and that in MySQL it does an estimate instead. They even know a simple way to provide quick estimates. Non-experts know that "count()" is faster in one tool than another.