I never understood why writing data to a database had to be such a complicated process, at least in production systems.
I shouldn't need a PhD to figure out how the db was configured.

I think a lot of companies design their databases at the start of a project then they never change. Technology then shifts and their way of using that database becomes difficult.

Where I work at the moment we deal with a legacy database where nobody has bit the bullet and said "We should change this". It's quite frustrating trying to figure out what developers 10 years ago were thinking.

@davidbond in short technical debt is the bane of all programmers.
I'm lucky enough that where I work they tend to let you do some work to fix old code but you need to be the one pushing for it