All fair points and obviously well thought out by knowledgeable people. I approach problem solving the same way, accounting for staff familiarity with tools, not just the wall-clock time taken for some esoteric approach.

My observation is that in the last year or so the relative weight of these contributions has shifted massively because of AI code authoring.

It’s so fast and easy to whip up a few hundred lines of code with something like Gemini Pro 2.5 that I got it to make me a sorting benchmark tool just so I’d have a data point for a comment in this thread! I never would have had the time years ago.

For relatively “small” and isolated problems like password hash lookup tables, it’s amazing what you can do in mere hours with AI assistance.

If I was approaching this same problem just two years ago I would have picked SQL Hyperscale too, for the same(ish) reasons.

Now? I feel like many more avenues have been opened up…