This is like the cartoonishly strawman version of this argument. Also the text file example is awful.
Do you really want do deal with durability and parsing a flat file, etc? Is that really easier that using a simple database? I see these kinds of arguments a lot from developers who think things like relational databases are hard to use, which artificially inflates the argument against "extra complexity"
There are hard tradeoffs to make, and the interesting arguments are in the place where reasonable people disagree about what kind of robustness will be needed over a particular timescale. It's never as simple as "it won't scale" where it's obvious to everyone that having millions of users tomorrow isn't realistic.
The text file example is pretty flawed. There are quite a few benefits to using databases over text files aside from being a place to store data. Structuring, availability, race conditions, etc. Including and using a NoSQL database is hardly the bottleneck in producing a production-level app/website/whatever.
Do you really want do deal with durability and parsing a flat file, etc? Is that really easier that using a simple database? I see these kinds of arguments a lot from developers who think things like relational databases are hard to use, which artificially inflates the argument against "extra complexity"
There are hard tradeoffs to make, and the interesting arguments are in the place where reasonable people disagree about what kind of robustness will be needed over a particular timescale. It's never as simple as "it won't scale" where it's obvious to everyone that having millions of users tomorrow isn't realistic.