And I find this extends to a more general principle of just pushing through solving a problem in order to understand it. Then once you've done that work, you can find a much better solution. It's easy to get stuck in an analysis paralysis loop where you try to come up with the perfect solution up front, but it's rarely possible to do for something you're doing for the first time. Doing a 'dumb' thing like making a giant mysql db that gets you to a working result is the right way to go about it.

Yup, that basically sums it up. The key part though was that doing the inefficient thing first allowed them to make progress and to understand the problem better by working through it, which later led to a more clever solution. The moral of the story here is that it's always better to solve the problem even if your solution isn't optimal, and then reflect on it.