[ksk]

I think the problem is two fold. Its this ideal that you should be working on "hard problems". Which for developers, means working on things one step above their current competency. Well that is great if you're doing research, but if you're shipping something or doing anything on production, you want to hire someone for whom this problem is easy, not hard. You don't want the wild-eyed fresh graduate with 'crazy' ideas, you want the old grizzled veteran for whom this sort of stuff is old-hat and boring because they've done it a million times. The first solution you come up with to any problem is never going to be the best solution. Its only when you've solved the same problem a few times that you will get better at solving it.

The second problem that I see is that of 'free' speedups. If you get a free speedup from hardware tech (like SSDs), you're thought is never going to be how can I match this speedup with my own code optimization, it means your production time is now cut in half or you can go focus on other things. Its only when you're forced to come in under a certain performance budget that people bother to optimize. As it is, this only seems to happen in fixed-hardware situations like console games/embedded systems, etc.