What I'm advocating here is not for optimized code. Only for non-pessimized by default code.
This kind of code does not tend to be rigid as you might imagine. Quite the opposite. Since it doesn't introduce a ton of premature abstractions and stays straight to the point, it tends to be flexible and easy to change/adapt.
You are still thinking in terms of a false dichotomy:
- Flexible but slow
- Fast but rigid
But it's a false dichotomy.
You don't need optimizations to get high performance software. Computers are very fast. You just need non-pessimized code.
It's funny. People use "computer are very fast" to dismiss all performance concerns. But this is not how we should think about it.
"Computer are very fast" means we don't need to optimize (as in micro-optimize on the instruction level) code to get high performance. We just need to get the clowns out of the car.
I think we're largely in agreement here e.g. I agree 100% that premature abstractions hold a lot of inertia. I'm just advocating for making decisions that optimize for "the right thing" over speed alone. In my experience the right thing tends to be adaptation, but that's because I do a lot of R&D work.
Sometimes yes, you can eat your cake and have it too w/r/t performance and flexibility; but the choice of programming language cannot be categorically relegated to "always pick the fastest one". There are no silver bullets, there will always be tradeoffs.
Flexibility matters, ecosystem matters, developer experience matters, third party libraries matter, good requirements (or lack thereof) matter, budget matters, timeline matters, security matters, and yes, performance also matters - it's just not the only consideration.
High level design decisions, language included, are not "pessimized by default" because they deem some of those other considerations more important than speed.
This kind of code does not tend to be rigid as you might imagine. Quite the opposite. Since it doesn't introduce a ton of premature abstractions and stays straight to the point, it tends to be flexible and easy to change/adapt.
You are still thinking in terms of a false dichotomy:
- Flexible but slow
- Fast but rigid
But it's a false dichotomy.
You don't need optimizations to get high performance software. Computers are very fast. You just need non-pessimized code.
It's funny. People use "computer are very fast" to dismiss all performance concerns. But this is not how we should think about it.
"Computer are very fast" means we don't need to optimize (as in micro-optimize on the instruction level) code to get high performance. We just need to get the clowns out of the car.