[xyzelement]

One of the key differences between art and engineering is that the former eschews compromise while the later requires it. An engineer that over-indexes on a single dimension of what they are working on is seldom a good engineer.

Efficiency is one dimension. If I couldn't run calculator on anything but the latest Pixel / iPhone, that would be clearly insane. But it's not the sole dimension - if my ambition is to create something that works well for millions or billions users, hand-crafting Assembly may not be the right tradeoff.