Username cannot be changed. It's IMPOSSIBLE? Can a programmer explain why a database change can't be made?

Making changes to a large production system is very difficult, time consuming and expensive. It's unlikely they can not do it (in the technical sense); far more likely they can not justify doing it (in the financial sense).

Let's say they pour half a million bucks into rewriting their codebase to support username changes.. how are they gonna recoup that? Sell username changes at $5 and wait for 100k people to pay, when they can just make a new account for free instead? How many years would that take to recoup? Plus how much would you lose to payment processing, and developing the system required to support the money transactions, as well as the customer service overhead?

What if it turns out to cost a million more than the initial projection?

Also factor in the opportunity cost of tying your resources to this project for multiple months (losing out on the income-generating work they are likely busy with)...

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