[ThrowawayR2]

> "It seems there are two distinct branches of computing emerging - one where performance matters, and one where it doesn't."

The unfortunate corollary being that the prevalence of developers who treat it as if it doesn't makes it darned hard to find one who treats as if it does when you need one.

> "Applications made for "consumers" tend to be made like a cheap car"

Not really a great analogy. The Prius has a reputation for quality and reliability; it's often seen used in taxi fleets, where those qualities are a must. Luxury cars often have high maintenance requirements and poor reliability since cost is not a concern to their owners.

[bbreier]

> Luxury cars often have high maintenance requirements and poor reliability since cost is not a concern to their owners.

This is absolutely a nit and does not disqualify your overarching statement at all, but generally these attributes are due to the constraints of technology-- for example, fitting large, high performance engines necessarily increases the frequency of maintenance intervals as well as the difficulty (and therefore, cost) of maintenance. If luxury car manufacturers could make cars with the handling and performance characteristics of their flagship models but with the maintenance costs and intervals of a Toyota Corolla, they absolutely would.

[regularfry]

This tends not to be why luxury models are unreliable in practice.

Luxury models are used by the manufacturer as a proving ground for the tech they're going to filter down to the mass market models next. Luxury model customers are relatively price-insensitive but want to be able to show off shiny features, so they get the exclusive new tech that's not been tried at scale yet. Thus the unreliability. It's not the technical constraints, it's the maturity of the technology.

[vl]

The main reason Priuses are used as cabs are local regulations, i.e. airports not allowing non-hybrid cabs, etc. For passengers experience is sub-standard compared to regular cabs.

[jashmatthews]

What’s substandard about a Prius? They’re fantastic cars.