[somenameforme]

It makes one wonder what the software world would like if the whole notion of 'premature optimization is the root of all evil' never existed. Because that advice, well intentioned and perfectly reasonable when applied thoughtfully, gradually morphed into 'optimization is the root of all evil' contributing to this ongoing race between computers speeding up and software slowing down.

And that's a scenario which a cynic would observe was almost certainly anything but undesired by the top players on either side. It's much easier to require what would be considered a supercomputer not long ago, to run a word processor, than it is to create scenarios where such power is meaningfully applied in a mass market product.

[xnx]

A lot of developers dont even realize how fast a web page or text editor could be. When you starting point is a massive farmework, you dont even realize that a computer should be ablr to fetch, parse, render and display in milliseconds. For example: the modern reinvention of serving html from a server as "server side rendering".

[rgblambda]

I don't think the idea morphed into "any optimization" is evil. But it is the unfortunate consequence of leaving optimization until after functional requirements are met. Same with any kind of tech debt. A mentality of "Let's just get this out the door now any fix it later" results in later meaning never.

[mike_hock]

It has morphed into "premature pessimization is the gold standard."