[blowski]

I can write to one database, replicate it (for example, by log shipping), and add an index only on the replica. This is not just being pedantic, this is a real-world pattern for some analytics solutions. You have a very high number of writes, and then build a reporting database at the end of every day, with all reads going to that database.

[scotty79]

That is a very valid scenario. But when you do those things you already know costs and benefits of the indexes so you are not going to be harmed by "no indexes = database slow" heuristc.

"database = fast" is way worse heuristic to believe in for the people that need heuristics to move on with what they are doing.