The hints are needed when you have a web scale / online transaction processing application, where you want to guarantee no table scan ever. Ideally, I'd want to rrun without statistics on the tables in that case (ie, no smart joins).
If hints are what they say they are, they cannot guarantee anything.
And they indeed are hints. FTA: “The documentation is explicit: advice "can only produce plans the core planner considers viable." Advice only nudges the planner toward one it already considered.”
honestly I dont want plan hinting so much as being able to ban table-scanning / nested loops / etc on specific tables, and be able to set that independent of actual table-size so I can coerce its failure in dev environments
